


Take Me Home

by morgaine2005



Series: Take Me Home and Related Tales [1]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (kind of), Accidental Baby Acquisition, Adoption, All the Gods are Real, BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), BAMF Crowley (Good Omens), Background Relationships, Divine Politics, F/M, Fantasy Violence, Finding Family, Gaslighting, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kid Fic, M/M, Multiple Discorporations, Mythology Mashup, Other, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Slight Canon Divergence, Temporary Character Death, Villain Character Death, What if Aziraphale and Crowley had a kid and the kid was Ariadne?, and this came out, basically I said to myself, deadnaming, lots of swearing, unplanned parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 34
Words: 226,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24331921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgaine2005/pseuds/morgaine2005
Summary: Once upon a time, an angel and a demon came together for one night only. They created something new - and quickly hid that something away, because if either of their Sides found that something, the consequences were unthinkable.Once upon a time, a wine god found a girl crying on a beach. She had a strange tale, a strange pair of wings, and a strange set of powers. He offered her his hand, and she took it and never looked back.Once upon a time, an angel and a demon sat in the Ritz, toasting the world they'd just saved and their future within it. The angel looked up and saw something he thought he'd hidden away a long, long time ago.This is a story about beginnings. About endings. About hope and choices. About finding your family and finding yourself along the way.But mostly, it's a story about love.
Relationships: Ariadne/Dionysus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Take Me Home and Related Tales [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1857055
Comments: 592
Kudos: 121
Collections: Tip Top Stories





	1. Every New Beginning Comes From Some Other Beginning’s End

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Baskets are Bad Omens](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19130620) by [WritingIsMyCoffee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingIsMyCoffee/pseuds/WritingIsMyCoffee). 



> This story would not exist without my fantastic betas, [andavri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andavri/pseuds/andavri) and [AnnUsual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnUsual/pseuds/AnnUsual), and the [Ace Omens](https://discord.com/channels/606085415174144040/606091582122360832) Discord server. Thank you SO MUCH for all of your help! You guys are amazing!
> 
> This story is completely written at the time of posting, so I will be updating three times a week at least.

_Circa 1845 B.C._

_Land of Moriah_

Crawly woke in a tent with a splitting headache.

It wasn’t a new sensation. Tents, well, Crawly had been waking up in those ever since the humans had figured out how to put skins on sticks to keep out the wind and weather. And as for the headache, that was what happened when he’d had too much to drink the night before and had forgotten to sober himself up. So Crawly was not alarmed, all things considered.

What was new, and frankly more than a bit alarming, was waking up with his limbs tangled in someone else’s.

Crawly frowned, rubbed the sleep from one eye, squinted, and—

_Oh no._

_Oh shit._

_Oh shit piss damn shit FUCK._

Even rolled over and, seemingly, fast asleep, Crawly would know that halo of white-blond curls _anywhere_.

_Shit shit shit shit SHIT!_

What had _happened_ last night?

Date wine.[1] Date wine had happened. Date wine in large quantities. All because the angel (as far as Crawly was concerned, there was only one angel who was _the angel_ ) had been … was scared the right word for it?

No, no, it wasn’t. Worried wasn’t it, either. Existentially terrified was, perhaps, a bit closer. What else was an angel to be when he had, as far as he could tell, gone directly against the word of the Almighty?

“But I couldn’t,” Aziraphale had said, fixated on one idea as only a very drunk and very frightened angel could be, “I couldn’t just _stand there_ and do—do nothing! Abraham _loves_ that boy, and his poor mother—they’d both gone through so much—all that faith, all that testing, and it all ends here? Sarah’s over one hundred years old, and if Abraham—if Abraham _did that_ —well, it would take more than a miracle for them to have another!”

“So you meddled,” Crawly had replied, even though he knew what had happened, since Aziraphale had already told him. Three times, in fact.

“So I meddled,” Aziraphale had answered, miserably. “Miracled up a ram and did my best Metatron impression. I mean— _surely_ that was the Almighty’s plan all along, wasn’t it? She couldn’t—it wouldn’t make any sense that She would—”

But Aziraphale hadn’t been able to finish that thought, instead sucking in air and pressing his hand to his mouth. “I’m done for, aren’t I? This—this isn’t the sort of thing you just get a reprimand for. This is—I’m going to Fall for this, aren’t I?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, angel. You? Fall?”

There were helpful, constructive, practical, _safe_ ways Crawly could have finished that sentence. Ways like, “If you were going to Fall for this, it would have already happened, angel, so no use worrying about it.” Or, “You didn’t Fall for giving away that sword, and that’s surely caused a lot more trouble than this ever could, so I think you’re safe.” Or even, “ _You’re_ the one always going on about the ‘Ineffable Plan,’ so what makes you think that this isn’t part of it?”

But no, Crawly hadn’t said any of those things. Instead, he’d gone and said something incredibly stupid.

“Angel, I think you’re about as capable of Falling as that ass over there,” here Crawly had gestured vaguely to a sleeping donkey and its rather surly keeper, “is of flying.”

And Aziraphale had looked up, and in the dim firelight his eyes had looked so _blue_ , blue like the sky on a cloudless day, blue like the heart of a forget-me-not, blue like the celestial firmament itself, and he had said, “ _Really_ , Crawly?”

And he had smiled. Really smiled, for the first time since the date wine had started flowing and he’d spilled the whole miserable story.

And then Crawly—

Well, it was best that he not think about that.

Best that he not think about brushing the angel’s hair back from his forehead, smiling a little himself.

Best that he not think about Aziraphale’s gaze flickering from Crawly’s hand to his mouth, and then Aziraphale surging forward like a lion chasing a gazelle to capture that mouth with his own.

Best that he not think about returning the – he’d call it a kiss for charity’s sake – with roughly the same amount of passion and skill that Aziraphale had given to him.

And definitely, _definitely_ best that he not think about the two of them stumbling into the (miraculously? infernally?) empty tent, not speaking and not needing to, both knowing what was going to happen next and not giving a damn about the consequences. Best that he not think about clothes being shed, garment by garment, and skin touching skin as both fell to the skins on the ground. And best that he not think about bodies being shed, about touches that went so much deeper than skin, about angelic/demonic essences slipping free of their corporeal chains, finding that _maybe_ they weren’t that different after all, that they could touch and feel and be and it was wonderful, beautiful, _glorious—_

Crawly bit down on his hand to keep the groan where it belonged, locked behind his teeth. Wouldn’t do to go waking the angel as he most emphatically _did not think about any of that_.

Although perhaps “not waking the angel” was a lost cause. Crawly heard (because even here, in the shaded safety of the tent, there was part of him that was always watching and listening, scanning the horizon for threats) a snuffle and a yawn.

Crawly blinked as two fundamental truths hit his consciousness at the same time.

The first was that there was no way an adult male (or an adult-male-shaped being) could snuffle and yawn like _that_.

The second was that the sound hadn’t come from Crawly’s side, where the angel’s snuffle-and-yawn-emitting orifices were, but rather from Crawly’s feet.

Crawly sat up (ignoring the sensation like a nail stabbing into his temple as he did so) and blinked.

He rubbed his eyes and blinked again.

At the end of the bed, carefully wrapped in blankets and rags, was—

_A BABY?_

Crawly looked to his left. He looked to his right. He extended his senses out, looking for any sign of a demonic or angelic signature. A stench of brimstone or a hint of ozone.

He didn’t find one. Just his own aura and the angel’s, and outside the tent, the auras of humans, camels, asses, donkeys, and the other beings that made up the caravan whose encampment he and the angel were borrowing.

And here, in the tent, a third aura. Small. Neither animal nor vegetable nor mineral. Something that was different – something that was both angelic and demonic, and somehow neither angelic nor demonic. Something that wasn’t human but wasn’t very far off from human yet was very different from human.

It was coming from the baby.

Crawly glanced sidelong at the angel, who was still, bless/damn him, asleep.

Then, slowly and carefully, so as not to disturb the sleeping angel or the sleeping infant, Crawly untangled himself from the angel and picked up the baby.

He’d held human infants before, plenty of them, knew how to support the head and cradle the body to keep the little one comfortable and (this was important) quiet. He knew, too, what they looked like. This baby could have easily blended into a nursery full of them. The skin was a little pale for the humans around these parts, and the flame-red fuzz on the head was a color most humans couldn’t achieve naturally. But other than that—

The baby opened its eyes.

Crawly gasped.

“Angel.” The time for letting the angel have his rest was done. Crawly followed up the words with a nudge from one knee. “Angel, you need to wake up. You need to wake up _now_.”

“Mmmph?” It wasn’t a proper question, but it was a start – followed by the angel turning over, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and yawning. “Crawly? What on earth is—”

Aziraphale stopped talking.

He blinked.

He swallowed hard and blinked again.

“Crawly,” and this was said in the very calm, very sensible tones of an angel who was not feeling calm or sensible at all, “why are you holding a baby?”

“Look.” It wasn’t an answer, but it was all Crawly could say right now. He held out the baby so that Aziraphale, leaning on one elbow, could do as he asked.

Aziraphale frowned and peered at the baby.

Celestial blue eyes met celestial blue eyes.

Aziraphale’s pair widened.

“ _What_?”

“My question exactly.”

“But _how_ —”

“Haven’t the foggiest.”

“But where did he—did she …?” Aziraphale quirked an eyebrow at Crawly.

“Angel, on the _list_ of things I am worried about, do you honestly think pronouns even enter into it?”

Aziraphale didn’t wait for Crawly to finish before pawing at the blankets and wrappings, gently untucking them and just as gently putting them back again. “She,” he said, as if it mattered.

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Crawly watched as Aziraphale slowly drew one finger down one dew-soft cheek. Watched Aziraphale’s Adam’s apple bob up and down.

The baby watched them both. Some part of Crawly dimly wondered what it was she was seeing and what she thought of it.

“… Can I hold her?”

Crawly had no more of an answer for this than he had for any of Aziraphale’s other questions. But he could hold out his arms, wordlessly, and Aziraphale could just as wordlessly take what was offered.

A demon couldn’t sense love, even the sort of world-embracing, cosmos-shifting love that a thoroughly besotted angel could give off. But just because Crawly couldn’t sense it didn’t mean that he couldn’t see it. Aziraphale was radiant with it, his face shining with a light just shy of the divine. The sight made Crawly swallow hard.

“Oh, will you just look at her?” Aziraphale whispered, reverent. “She’s perfect.”

“ _Perfect_?” Crawly whispered. In a perverse way he was grateful; the words shook him out of his stupor. “What she _is_ is a problem.”

Aziraphale looked up, jaw fallen, eyes redolent with hurt.

“Angel, just—turn down the love-fest for ten seconds and _think_. What is going to happen if our Head Offices find out about her? _Either_ of our Head Offices?”

Aziraphale didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. His sharp intake of breath and the way he clutched the baby closer said everything that needed to be said.

“Exactly. We need …”

_… No._

Crawly’s mind was finally clawing its way out of the stupor caused by date wine, angel, and baby enough to _think_ , and for that, he would heartily thank Sa—Go— _Someone_.

“You need to hide her,” Crawly said.

“ _Me_? But—”

“Angel.” Crawly swallowed. “Don’t—don’t make me say what would happen if _my_ Head Office found her before yours did.”

He wasn’t sure he could force the words out. That if they were lucky, very, very lucky, that Hell would unmake this baby in the most painful manner possible, until there was nothing left of her but dust and ash. If they were unlucky? Well, Hell would still unmake her in the most painful manner possible, but once she was unmade, they’d built her back up again, turn this not-angel/not-demon into a being every bit as infernal as any beast that came from the pit.

And it wouldn’t matter that Crawly would rather be unmade himself than let that happen. Hell’s response to that notion would be a dry, “That can be arranged,” followed by arranging it.

And oh, Someone, if _HE_ found out about her—Crawly couldn’t even finish the thought.

But Heaven … if Heaven found her, they’d at least kill her quickly.

Crawly hoped. He was doing rather a lot of that, but better options weren’t particularly thick on the ground.

Still, at least some of his hopes were not in vain, for though Aziraphale paled, he at least nodded. With a quick glance at the baby, he said, “I need to hide her.”

“Great.” Crawly gulped and nodded in turn. “Excellent. Fantastic. Well then. I’ll, er, leave you to it.” Without waiting for a response, he miracled himself into a new set of robes. It would do absolutely nothing to throw angelic or demonic pursuers off the scent, but it might confuse the humans, and Crawly would take what he could get.

“But—but wait—don’t you want to—?”

“No time, angel. Busy schedule, I’ve got. Things to see, people to do—temptations to, er, tempt—”

“But—”

“Best of luck with the hiding. Don’t tell me how it goes.” He already had one hand on the door-flap, but stopped.

He turned around. Golden eyes met blue.

“I mean it, angel. _Don’t_ tell me how it goes.”

Aziraphale didn’t answer. He glanced at the baby in his arms, who was starting to fuss.

He looked up and nodded.

Crawly managed a half-smile in response and ducked out of the tent, into the blinding sunshine.

The last thing he heard, before he decided _bloody bollocks to all this_ and slithered off in snake form, was the thin, high wail of a heartbroken newborn.

* * *

_Circa 1825 B.C._

_Isle of Naxos_

Dionysus, God of Wine, Theater, and Ritual Ecstasy, wasn’t properly awake, but he could sense his father’s handiwork. The sticky weight of humidity on his skin. The crackle of static in the air. The scent of rain on the breeze.

A storm was brewing. And—

Dionysus’s nose wrinkled.

Someone was crying.

 _That_ wasn’t part of the storm.

Slowly, he cracked one eye open. When the light didn’t immediately make his head explode with pain, Dionysus let the other open as well.[2]

Still no pain. Good. Dionysus pushed his luck and himself up on his elbows.

With the familiarity of long habit, his gaze swept over the clearing where he and his band had come to rest, counting satyrs and Maenads. There was pot-bellied Silenus, curled up around a krater; Aikaterine and Eunike wrapped in each other’s arms as always; Kallias and Diodoros clasping hands in their sleep with Melitta in the middle …

As Dionysus counted his followers, he frowned.

Everyone was here.

And nobody was crying.

He tilted his head and cocked an ear.

The sound of crying was coming from the same direction as the storm. He hesitated.

But, curiosity, as mortals would say, killed the cat, and Dionysus had always felt an affinity for felines of all stripes.[3] He paused only long enough to adjust his leopard-skin chlamys and make sure his (empty) wineskin was hooked to his belt before leaving the clearing and heading down the path to the beach.

The wind grew stronger as he walked, the scent of rain thicker. And the crying grew louder.

It wasn’t long before he broke through the trees and stepped blinking onto the beach, where he saw—

Well.

There wasn’t much that could surprise Dionysus. Crying girls (or young women, really) on a beach generally didn’t qualify. He’d encountered more than his share of crying young women, drunk and otherwise, on beaches and elsewhere.

Her getup – Cretan-style gown and bedraggled curls in, again, the Cretan style – also wasn’t terribly surprising. No, they weren’t on Crete, but if the black-sailed ship disappearing over the horizon was any indication, this young lady hadn’t been on Naxos for very long. And while the hair was an unusual shade of red, well, mortals were doing quite inventive things with henna these days.

Even her pose – arms wrapped around knees, head pillowed on dress and legs – was familiar. Unsurprising.

The dove-gray wings springing from her back and wrapping around her entire body, though?

 _Those_ were surprising.

Dionysus coughed to announce his presence. “Er, miss—”

He wasn’t entirely certain what he planned to say next, but it didn’t matter. The young lady was too busy gasping, whipping her head around, and stumbling to her feet to give him the chance to say it. Her wings came up, tense and coiled, like a swan’s just before the swan in question treated whoever was foolish enough to get in striking range to an unholy beatdown.

Dionysus took a full step back, hands up and palms facing the young lady in the most nonthreatening manner he could manage.

Not that it worked. “Who are you?” the young lady demanded. “What do you want?”

Now that she was facing him, he made several rapid assessments. Eyes didn’t get that red from just a few minutes of crying. Clothes didn’t get that rumpled from half an hour on a beach. And it generally took a lot to make a mortal woman stand like that, like she was just one wrong word away from unleashing a lifetime of pent-up rage on the nearest target.

Dionysus took another step back. “Dionysus, miss. God of Wine, amongst other things.” He couldn’t resist the slight bow, the smirk and the wink. “At your service.”

The wings, Dionysus noticed, were drooping. That was about the only part of her that was looking less than battle-ready. “Dionysus.” She took a step back. Something made her glance over the horizon, to the ship that was almost out of sight. “Son of Zeus?”

“Ah, so you’ve heard of me, then?” Dionysus grinned.

Dionysus would have loved to see her response to that, but alas, even the prayers of gods were not always answered. For at that moment lightning split the sky, a great wave crashed onto the shore and wet the young lady’s wings, and the first fat drops of rain began to fall.

The young lady shrieked and darted away from the waves. Dionysus, however, glowered at the sky. _Thanks, Father. Thanks a lot._

Sniffing the breeze, Dionysus guessed they had maybe five minutes before the heavens properly opened. If they were lucky. “Come on,” he said, holding out a hand. “There’s a temple a few minutes’ walk away. Less if we run.”

The young lady stared at the hand.

“Trust me, miss,” Dionysus said, “you don’t want to be on this beach when—” He wasn’t able to finish the thought, since the roll of thunder did it for him.

The young lady jumped. Now she glanced between Dionysus’s hand and the gathering storm clouds.

She swallowed. “Lead the way.” She did not take his hand, choosing instead to wring her own together.

Dionysus shrugged. “Suit yourself. Let’s go!” He ran off, leaving the young lady to follow or not as she pleased. Together they jogged up the beach toward the terracotta-roofed temple in the distance.

As they ran, Dionysus spared a thought for his followers in the clearing. _Any chance you could not drench them, Father?_

He had no idea what his father’s answer to that would be – although the way the raindrops came faster did not leave him hopeful. He and the young lady barely made it to the temple before the deluge began.

They stumbled up the steps, slipping on the slick stone, finally skidding to a halt on the peristatis. Dionysus leaned against a column and shook out his hair. “Well,” he said, “now that we’ve escaped a soaking—mostly—I think—”

He stopped. He blinked. “Where did your wings go?”

The young lady, who had been wringing out her chiton, looked up. Her gaze barely grazed his before she looked away. “I—put them away. It’s not like I can fly in this weather.”

“… Oh?”

“Wet wings,” the young lady replied, as if that explained everything, which it most emphatically did not.

She peered into the gloom of the temple proper. “Whose temple is this – do you know?”

Dionysus didn’t bother to look inside; trying to guess which god was represented by a statue was a great party game but a rotten way of finding things out. Instead, he opened his senses to the energy surrounding the temple. “Poseidon’s, I think.”

The young lady’s eyes widened. “ _Poseidon’s_? I should—I should—” What she _wanted_ to do was obvious by the way she was edging closer to the steps. And perhaps she would have run down them and out of sight, but for the branch of lightning that split the sky.

She shrieked and stumbled back. The thunder rumbled on her heels.

“I wouldn’t go out in that,” Dionysus said, intentionally keeping his voice light. He itched to come closer, touch her shoulder, take her hand, but kept himself still. She was a skittish filly, this one, as liable to bite the hand that fed her as to take the apple offered.

“Well, I’m not going in _there_.” She jerked her head toward the sanctuary.

“Never said you had to.”

Dionysus surveyed her through half-lidded eyes and thought of a ship sailing rapidly away. Of a sudden storm blowing in off the sea. True, the storm _could_ be his father’s doing, but it could just as easily be his uncle’s …

“Did you upset him?” Dionysus asked, nodding to the inside of the temple.

“No!” The reply was too swift, too indignant to be a lie. Or a conscious lie at any rate.

Dionysus raised an eyebrow.

The young lady’s shoulders slumped. “Maybe. I don’t know.” She put her head in her hands and rubbed her entire face. “Theseus certainly doesn’t bear me any good will.”

“Who?”

She looked up. “Theseus. Poseidon’s son?”

“You’ll have to be more specific than that.” Dionysus shot her a lopsided smile. “My uncle has _many_ sons.”

The young lady caught her lip between her teeth. She glanced at the horizon, though the rain was pouring down in such thick sheets that Dionysus would be surprised if she could see to the beach, never mind the sea beyond it. “So you don’t … know him?”

“Is he mortal?”

“He’d _better_ be,” she replied in a tone that implied she’d rather like to test the proposition herself.

“Then no, I don’t.” He shrugged and spread his hands. “I don’t get to know my mortal cousins until they prove to me that they’re worth knowing. I have a hard enough time keeping track of the immortal ones.”

“… Oh.”

She seemed content to let the conversation lie there, to stare into the rain and let her thoughts take her far away. Dionysus was not. “Would you like to talk about it?”

Her gaze and her thoughts snapped to him in the same moment.

“Whatever this Theseus did that’s upset you.”

“I never said—”

Dionysus let his raised eyebrow say, quite clearly, what he thought of that protest.

The young lady held his gaze for a moment, but it wasn’t long before her breath left her in a sigh and a slump of her shoulders. “Why should I? What do you care?”

“Why do I care? Curiosity, mainly. It’s not every day I come across winged women crying on beaches. As for why you should …” Dionysus gestured to the pounding rain and the invisible ocean. “Well, one – it’s not like you have anything better to do right now. And two – what do you have to lose?”

“The favor of another god. Or all of them,” the young lady muttered.

“I endeavor not to blame mortals for getting caught in the crossfire of gods’ quarrels,” Dionysus replied, making a great show of buffing his nails on his chlamys and surveying the results. “I have … experience with what happens when gods are not so kind as that. Or goddesses, technically, but really, does it make a difference?”

The young lady chuckled mirthlessly. “Probably not.” Then she sighed. “Are—are you sure you want to know?”

“When you preface it like that, now I _have_ to know.”

He thought he saw a smile ghost across her face. But it was gone before he could be sure.

Then, without warning, she dropped to the floor of the peristatis, once again hugging her knees to her chest, though the wings didn’t make a second appearance. “Have you ever heard of the Cretan Bull? And Asterion, the—” She bit her lip. “The Minotaur?”

 _Cretan Bull, Cretan Bull … oh,_ that _sordid little story._ Dionysus tried not to shudder. Perhaps he hadn’t room to talk, but really, making a woman fall in love with and copulate with a bull – all to get back at her husband for impiety! – was a bit … much. Poseidon was usually good fun, but sometimes he could be decidedly odd.

He slowly sank to the floor himself, near but not too near. “I have.”

“… Asterion is—was my twin brother,” the young lady whispered.

Dionysus stared. He blinked. His jaw fell.

“ _Twin_?”

“What—oh! I’m Minos’s child. Not the bull’s. At least …” The young lady shrugged. “It’s what we always assumed. It makes more sense than … than anything else.”

She certainly didn’t look half-bull. And considering the two eggs laid by Dionysus’s father’s latest paramour … well, the idea that one half of a pair of twins could be fathered by a more-or-less mortal man and the other by a bull was practically _normal_.

“Understood. Anyway, you were saying? Your twin brother?”

She didn’t answer right away, preferring to pick at a loose thread on her skirt. “They called him a monster,” she whispered, and if Dionysus hadn’t had a god’s senses, he might not have heard her. “But he is—wasn’t. He w-was different, and he didn’t fit in, and maybe he could be dangerous. But none of that made him a _monster_.”

Dionysus said nothing.

And slowly, haltingly, the whole nasty tale came out. A half-bull, half-man who, if not precisely monstrous, was large and strong and liable to dangerous rages. A twin sister and a mother who were the only ones who could calm him. A father who was also a king, who looked at the cuckoo in the nest and saw a potential threat to his true-born sons, and who, as soon as the mother was dead in childbed, had the Minotaur locked in a labyrinth he’d been building under the palace for years.

And maybe the tale could have ended there and been tragic enough, but it didn’t. No, there had to be an accident in Athens. Another brother of the young lady killed. War fought, war won. Tribute demanded, seven youths and seven maidens, to be sacrificed to the beast in the heart of the maze.

(“I think—I think Father wanted to be rid of Asterion,” the young lady said, her voice cracking dangerously. “But he didn’t dare kill him himself. Or hire a hero to do it. He was afraid Poseidon would—would have a problem with that.”

“He probably would have. Poseidon has a bit of a temper.”)

The first set of tributes was sent, entered the labyrinth and never came out again. A year later, another seven youths and seven maidens were sent to the same fate. A year after that, another black-sailed Athenian ship appeared at the docks of Knossos. This one carried six Athenian youths, seven Athenian maidens, and Theseus.

Dionysus did not need his brother Apollo’s gift of prophecy to see where this was going.

But he let her tell her tale at her own pace. Let her talk about the silver-tongued Theseus, who called himself the son of old Aegeus but who had far too much of the sea in his eyes for the young lady to believe that. Let her explain how Theseus had promised to help her outwit her father and get the Minotaur out of the labyrinth and off to the wilds, where he could live in peace, not hurting anyone and not being hurt in turn.

(“I thought he’d do it,” the young lady said, voice leaden and gray as the skies above them. “I thought he’d see it as a chance to humiliate Father, the way Father humiliated Athens. And I told him—I _told_ him that killing Asterion would just play into Father’s hands. And I thought …”

“You thought Theseus loved you,” Dionysus replied.

She looked up, gaze holding his for a few heart-stopping moments. Then she sighed.

“He certainly pretended to.”)

And. Well. The tale practically told itself. A midnight rendezvous, a hurried trip into the center of the labyrinth. Theseus had smuggled a blade inside his tunic. And once he and the Minotaur were face to face …

It wasn’t hard to imagine what would happen when a son of Poseidon ran into a monster Poseidon had created. If it hadn’t been for the gray-voiced young lady in front of him, Dionysus might have been impressed. It was a neat little story, a clever plot, for Poseidon to create a monster only to help his son dispatch it and gain glory.

But it was the teller who shaped a story, and this teller saw not a triumph but a tragedy.

And then … then things got worse. Because the teller in front of Dionysus had watched a so-called hero slay the so-called monster that she called brother. And while she had still been screaming, Theseus had scooped up the Minotaur’s head with one hand and the Minotaur’s sister with the other and hustled them all to the boat, where the six Athenian youths and seven Athenian maidens were waiting to slip away into the night.

“He wanted to make me his bride,” the young lady said, still gray-voiced. “Maybe to insult Crete. Or maybe he and my father planned the whole thing. I don’t know.”

“So then why aren’t you still on that ship, bound for Athens?”

She looked up.

She smirked. If it weren’t for how sad her eyes looked, Dionysus would have called that smirk smug and self-satisfied.

“Well, I didn’t want to go to Athens, and I can be … quite persuasive, when I put my mind to it.”

Then she sighed, exhausted.

“So,” Dionysus asked. In the time it had taken for her to tell her tale, the skies had cleared, and the sea had calmed. “Now what?”

The young lady looked up, searching the now-cloudless sky for an answer. “I don’t know.” She laughed. “Got any creatures that need calming? I think it’s about the only thing I’m good for. That, and being duped by heroes.”

“Hey. You just said yourself, you can be quite persuasive when you put your mind to it. Personally, I’d like to see that in action.”

The young lady raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, come on. My brain hasn’t been entirely pickled in wine. There’s no way you just sweet-talked a son of Poseidon into letting you go.”

She bit her lip. “Can … can I see that wineskin?”

“What, this?” Dionysus patted the skin hooked to belt. “It’s empty. Or else I would have already offered you some.”

“I know. Just—let me see it?”

Not seeing any reason not to, Dionysus unhooked the wineskin and handed it over.

The young lady squinted.

Dionysus’s eyes widened.

The wineskin grew plumper before his eyes.

“Hey,” he said, “you’re not supposed to do that—you need to get a new wineskin—”

She glared at him, then, with a roll of her eyes, waved her hand.

And the wineskin was new.

She handed it back for him to turn over in his hands, poking and prodding. “You can drink it,” she said. “It’s good.”

There was only one way to test that proposition. Dionysus brought the wineskin to his lips and drank.

It was good. And he would know.

He smacked his lips together. “Well, then. You got them drunk and talked them into dropping you off here?”

“Not exactly.” Now another smug little smirk poked at her lips. “That’s not all I can do.”

“… Oh?”

“I can also turn wine into seawater. Food stores into moths. Ropes into seaweed. That kind of thing.” She shrugged. “They were rather glad to be rid of me by the time they saw this island on the horizon.”

“But you couldn’t stop Theseus?”

Her gaze dropped. “I was too late.”

“Oh.” Dionysus swallowed. Perhaps a change of subject would be best. “By the way … have you ever considered becoming a Maenad?”

The young lady started and stared at him.

“It’s not a bad career path, if I do say so myself. Parties every day, orgies every night … and if we have the occasional mad riot, well, nobody’s perfect. And, to be frank,” he patted the wineskin at his hip, “we could use someone with your talents around.”

“Can’t you make your own wine?”

“Sure – but I’ve never turned rope into seaweed. Or bread into moths.”

“… Oh.” And that was all the young lady said. Her gaze once again went unfocused, her eyes turning to the sea.

They were very blue, those eyes, Dionysus noticed. Blue like the now-cloudless sky above them.

Dionysus watched and waited.

He saw her swallow before her gaze flicked back to him. “I … I suppose …”

Dionysus raised an eyebrow in mute inquiry.

“… It’s not like I have anywhere else to go.”

“You don’t have to stay any longer than you care to,” he said. “If you should decide you want to settle down somewhere and … turn bread into moths …” He shrugged. “You’ll always be free to go.” He frowned. “Although if you want to keep up the wine trick, I will have to insist on you becoming one of my priestesses. I’m can’t afford the competition.”

“That seems fair.”

“Then it’s settled.” Dionysus hopped to his feet and held out a hand. “Welcome to the crew, er …”

He trailed off. “You … you never did mention your name.”

She didn’t mention it now. At least, not right away. First, those brilliant blue eyes flickered between his face and his hand. Once, twice, thrice.

She gulped. “Ariadne,” she whispered. “That is—my name is Ariadne.”

Then, with the air of someone flinging herself off a precipice and praying for a soft landing, she put her hand in his.

And Dionysus smiled.

“Ariadne,” he repeated, helping her to her feet. “Well, then. As I was saying—welcome to the crew. You’ll like it here. I promise.”

* * *

_Circa 2019 A.D._

_The Ritz, London_

“Cheers,” Crowley said, lifting his just-filled champagne glass toward Aziraphale. “To the world.”

Aziraphale didn’t even try to hide the wave of contentment that washed over him. “To the _world_.”

And really, what wasn’t there to be content about? The world was, for the moment at least, safe. Crowley was by his side, also safe. The forces of Heaven and Hell were likely to be too busy soothing their ruffled feathers and sorting through mountains of paperwork produced by one (1) failed Apocalypse and two (2) failed executions to bother them for quite some time. And he and Crowley were about to enjoy a truly _scrumptious_ lunch.[4] There was nothing …

Well, there was something. A fly in the ointment. A missing piece of the puzzle. A whole chapter ripped from the book. But Aziraphale wasn’t going to think about that right now.

He’d spent over thirty-eight hundred years not thinking about that. It would be a shame to ruin the streak.

Although …

Aziraphale permitted himself a sidelong glance at Crowley. He wondered how much time Crowley had spent _not thinking about that_ over the past thirty-eight centuries. Probably as much as Aziraphale. Maybe more. There was quite a bit that went on in that head that Crowley didn’t care to show to the world.

Speaking of which. “Penny for your thoughts?” Crowley asked, absently rolling the stem of his champagne flute between his fingers.

“Oh—it’s nothing.”

One eyebrow quirked over those infernally dark glasses. Only Crowley could manage to express so much with just a look and with half his face covered to boot.

“Well, it’s nothing I care to discuss in public,” Aziraphale corrected. And this really wasn’t a conversation for the Ritz. It was the sort of conversation one had behind closed doors. And walls. Big thick walls. With plenty of wards to chase off ethereal/occult interference.

“Anyway, you never did explain – exactly what is _wrong_ with a tartan collar?” Aziraphale asked, and Crowley’s scoff was all but music to his ears.

Because really, if this wasn’t what he had saved the world for, what was? It wasn’t for nice little sushi places or bookshops or not having to watch the _Sound of Music_ ever, delightful as those things might be. It was for lunches at the Ritz, and afternoons in St. James’s Park feeding the ducks, and long evenings in the bookshop getting spectacularly drunk.[5] It was for the way Crowley threw his head back when he laughed, the way Aziraphale always knew when he was rolling his eyes even if he couldn’t see said eyes, the glint of light off that flame-red hair …

And maybe that was why Aziraphale saw what he did. Because there was a part of him, always, that was on the lookout for that particular shade of flame. Even when he knew exactly where the thing he was truly looking for was (to his left, sprawled out in one of the delicate little Ritz chairs like he had only passing familiarity with what sitting was and what chairs were for), he never quite stopped looking. The subconscious didn’t turn off as easily as all that.

So he noticed. The glint of light, the spark of flame. And he looked, merely a passing glance, because habit was habit.

And _then_ he did a double-take.

Was that …

It couldn’t be. It was absolutely impossible. Well, maybe not impossible, per se. But certainly highly improbable.

Or a coincidence. Yes, that, of course. Humans were doing _such_ inventive things with hair dyes these days; why, not last week Aziraphale’s barber had suggested …

The thought petered out (perhaps aware that it was convincing no one and that, more importantly, there was no one around to convince) as Aziraphale studied the young lady in more detail.

For that was what had attracted his attention – a young lady with hair the same shade as Crowley’s. She sat at one of the small tables to the left of theirs. Her back was to them; the most Aziraphale could see was the hint of a profile.

But even with that (rather huge and blaring) caveat, there were hints, details that came with quiet pings of recognition. Like the way she sat, spine curved in a way that suggested she had a few more vertebrae were typically found in _Homo sapiens_. The way she rolled the stem of her wineglass between her fingers. The way she tossed her head back when the young man sitting across from her leaned forward and whispered something to her.

“… and then I said—angel, are you even listening to me?”

Aziraphale jumped. Literally jumped. Rattle-the-cutlery-and-make-half-the-restaurant-look-at-him jumped. “Wh-what?”

Crowley’s brows scrunched together. “What’s gotten into you? This is supposed to be our reprieve.”

Aziraphale’s mouth opened of its own accord, ready to spin some soothing nonsense about books or food or ineffability.

Except … he hadn’t gotten himself discorporated, very nearly killed, and in all probability fired to be less than honest now.

So Aziraphale cleared his throat to cover the time it would take to gather his courage. “Do you—do you see the young lady over there?” he said, nodding. “The one with the red hair.”

Crowley looked. No, it wasn’t a look. It was barely more than a glance before he turned back to Aziraphale. “What about her?”

“My dear boy, _look_ at her _hair_.”

Once again, Crowley looked. This time it was a real look. He even brought his glasses down, just a tad, to see better.

Yet when he turned back, it was with a sunny smile. “Well, what can I say? Seems these days I’m inspiring the folks at L’Oréal.”

“ _Do_ be serious. Have you ever seen hair that exact shade?”

Crowley took a breath—

“I haven’t. Except on one person. Well, two. And believe me, I have _looked_.”

That seemed to give Crowley pause. He glanced at the young lady again.

“And—and maybe I am a bit mad to think it,” Aziraphale went on, “but I _do_ think—”

“Shh.” Crowley’s shushing motion just brushed Aziraphale’s sleeve, and that was more than enough to shut him up. “They’re getting up.”

Aziraphale looked up.

Because of the way the restaurant was laid out, the young lady and her companion had no choice but to pass their table on their way to the exit. Aziraphale barely cast a glance at the young man, garnering only a confused impression of curly dark hair and the sort of tan most Caucasians who were not blessed by genetics paid a lot of money for these days. The young lady, on the other hand …

Oh, he _knew_ that stride; that was almost exactly how Crowley walked in heels; this was just a bit more controlled. Aziraphale looked up further, hoping to get a good look at her face—

Their eyes met. Aziraphale flashed a quick smile – after all, one could kick the angel out of Heaven but kicking the Heaven out of the angel was a much tougher proposition[6] – before good manners won out and Aziraphale glanced at the table.

He was cursing himself before a second had passed and looking back up again, hoping to catch another glimpse, before five seconds had gone.

He barely had a chance to see the wine-purple dress round the corner. Yet still he looked, hoping against hope that maybe she had forgotten her handbag or her left shoe or those dratted mobile phones humans were carrying with them everywhere these days—

“Angel.”

There were very few things that would have drawn Aziraphale from his reverie. Crowley speaking that word in that tone topped the list of them.

But Crowley wasn’t looking at him. Given how still Crowley held himself and how he didn’t seem to breathe, Aziraphale would bet that Crowley wasn’t looking at much of anything.

“Did you happen to notice her eyes?”

Her eyes! He’d made eye contact, but stupid him, he’d been so embarrassed to have been caught staring he hadn’t marked the color—

“They were blue.”

Crowley say anything further. He didn’t need to. When he looked at Aziraphale, Aziraphale heard exactly what he wasn’t saying.

_Like yours._

Aziraphale gulped. “Well—well.”

They didn’t say anything else. Aziraphale was too busy downing the rest of his champagne. And Crowley was too busy staring into the middle distance.

Aziraphale broke the silence, because someone had to. “It could—it could be a coincidence, of course. Humans are doing quite—quite remarkable things with hair dye, these days. And contacts. Those as well.”

“Or it could be a trap.”

There was absolutely no way to categorically deny that as a possibility, so Aziraphale didn’t even try. “Even so …”

Crowley raised an eyebrow.

“We have—we have to find her, Crowley.” Even though it wouldn’t make a difference if any ethereal or occult spies had found their way into the Ritz and this conversation, Aziraphale still found himself lowering his voice. “It’s been long enough. Hiding won’t keep her safe anymore. Not from Armageddon or—or the next one that’s coming. And we can forget all about keeping _us_ safe.”

Crowley snorted at the last bit. But he said nothing further.

Neither did Aziraphale. There was a time to press forward, a time to argue, and this … wasn’t it.

Instead he waited, and watched, and hoped.

“Maybe …”

Aziraphale held his breath.

“Maybe you have a point. Just one, mind.”

And Aziraphale smirked. It was small, and it was barely there for a second – but it was quite smug, and he knew it.

He lifted his champagne glass, which was miraculously full again. “To happy hunting?”

Crowley nearly jumped. He glared. “I didn’t agree to anything.”

“Not yet,” Aziraphale said lightly, “but you will.” He tilted his glass toward Crowley and raised both eyebrows.

Crowley sighed. But he lifted his own glass and clinked it with Aziraphale’s.

“To happy hunting.”

* * *

[1] As in, wine made from dates, not the sort of wine you drink on a date. Although in this context, the difference may be academic.

[2] Being God of Wine didn’t make Dionysus immune to hangovers; it just gave him a few extra tricks for dealing with them. For instance, hair of the dog _always_ worked for him.

[3] And spots.

[4] Or at least, Aziraphale was about to enjoy a truly scrumptious lunch. Aziraphale held no illusions when it came to Crowley and food.

[5] So maybe the bookshop did enter into it, just a bit.

[6] As Crowley would say, that was half the problem with Hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
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	2. The Mighty Titan and His Troubadours

The Uber was speeding away from the Ritz,[1] but though Ariadne was safely ensconced in its backseat and physically speeding along with it, her thoughts remained behind.

Who _were_ those men?

And why had they been staring at her?

It took every ounce of self-control Ariadne possessed not to turn around and look back. Instead she took her phone out and stared blankly at the sudoku game she’d started before lunch, when Dionysus had been taking forever in the shower. It would give her something to do, or something to pretend to do, since Dionysus had the job of entertaining the driver well in hand.

She wished she knew why she was so bothered by the staring. It wasn’t that they’d managed to push through her defenses; she’d left most of her defenses behind, anyway. One didn’t show up for lunch at the Ritz in a messy bun, supremely comfortable if carefully unflattering clothes, and no makeup – and that was before she planned her attack for where they were going _after_ lunch.

Even so … she hadn’t been trying to attract attention. And the attention she’d attracted hadn’t been the type she was used to attracting. There were some men who wouldn’t be put off by all the messy buns, salsa-stained t-shirts, and “I literally woke up like this” makeup-less faces in the world. Put on a nice dress, add some eyeliner, and make the effort to twist her hair into a French roll, and their attention increased tenfold. She was _used_ to that, expected it, planned for it.

Yet that wasn’t the attention she’d gotten. Hell, if Blondie had ever experienced sexual attraction to a woman in his life, Ariadne would eat her laptop. And while Sunglasses was harder to read,[2] it was plain as the nose on his face that all his romantic/sexual energy was taken up by Blondie.

A sudden touch made Ariadne jump. But it was just Dionysus, taking advantage of the driver’s distraction[3] to put his hand on her knee and raise both eyebrows at her. _All right?_

Ariadne flashed him a quick smile. She could feel how brittle it was. Dionysus, not having been born yesterday, looked unconvinced.

Then the driver said something, Dionysus looked up and laughed, and Ariadne retreated into her thoughts once more.

Really, if she was going to be distracted and out-of-sorts, she might as well be distracted and out-of-sorts about something that mattered. Like whatever had possessed Zeus to call a “family meeting” with less than a week’s notice, in _London_ of all places. Zeus was a traditionalist if there ever was one; when he wanted to schedule a family reunion, he did so in Dion or Litochoro, small villages at the foot of Mount Olympus. If he was feeling especially generous to the international travelers, he might move the meeting to Athens or Thessaloniki.

Still, Ariadne supposed she ought to be grateful that Zeus had combined the short notice with a relatively reachable location. She’d had to use magic to procure her and Dionysus’s plane tickets and hotel reservation as it was. At least now that they were here, they could rely on Uber and their own well-padded bank accounts for anything else they might—

“Ari?”

Ariadne jumped. She actually jumped. _Gods_ , what was _wrong_ with her?

Dionysus smiled at her, equal parts fond, indulgent, and worried. “We’re here.”

“Oh—right.” And then there was nothing left for Ariadne to do but untangle herself from the seatbelt and fiddle with her phone (why did it open on the sudoku app?) to rate the ride and tip the driver. Thankfully Dionysus came around to open the car door for her and guide her into the building with a hand on the small of her back, else she might have found herself walking all the way back to Piccadilly.

She barely looked at the nondescript office building, spared only a shadow of a glance at the discreet nameplate by the door, which read _Olympic Holdings, Ltd._ Paid no attention to the brief conversation Dionysus had with the receptionist. Had no idea which button he pressed once they got into the elevator and what direction they went in once they got off it.

The first thing that brought her out of her reverie was the very familiar, very unwelcome voice that greeted her as soon as Dionysus pushed open the door to what looked like a conference room.

“I thought this was supposed to be a _family_ meeting.”

Ariadne stopped dead. Dionysus tensed beside her.

But she still sent a small, tight smile Poseidon’s way because, really, it had been several thousand years, the main cause of their quarrels (Theseus) was long dead, and _someone_ had to be the bigger person.

“Oh, for _Olympus’s_ sake,” sighed Aphrodite. She was seated across from Poseidon, looking perfect as always. Even when she was sighing and rolling her eyes. “If I qualify as family, surely Ariadne does. Speaking of which—Ari, darling, how _are_ you? And you too, Dionysus, of course.”

Neither had a chance to answer before Poseidon snorted. “You married into the family.”

“And divorced out of it,” Ares said. As always, he was taking up far more space than he needed, legs spread wide in front of him and one arm draped over the back of Aphrodite’s chair. “Although you could always marry _back_ into it, if you wanted.”

A small strangled sound—and there was Hephaestus, bent over the laptop hooked up the projector. His hands looked too big for the tiny keyboard and trackpad, and he was using his wheelchair today.

A wave of relief washed over Ariadne. If Ares was going to needle Hephaestus – whether purposely or not, Ariadne was never sure how things stood between the brothers from minute to minute – then she and Dionysus could find their seats and fade into the background. Or at least she could fade into the background. Dionysus rarely needed to or wanted to.

She glanced around the room. The table was nearly full. Next to Ares were Apollo and Artemis, blond heads together and whispering like always. Then Hermes, tapping away on his phone. Hephaestus was next, on the laptop, followed by Athena, whose attention was split between peering over Hephaestus’s shoulder and murmuring to her father.

Zeus, of course, sat at the head of the conference table – or he would have, if doing so wouldn’t have meant he’d be staring right into the projector. Hera was across from Zeus, scribbling on a notepad. Next to her was an empty seat, with Demeter in the chair next to that. Her wheat-gold hair was tied up in a kerchief and her overalls had grass stains on the knees.

On Demeter’s left was Persephone, then three empty chairs, then Poseidon. Ariadne wasn’t relishing the idea of having only Dionysus between her and Poseidon, but she supposed that was the price of lingering over lunch and the delightful chardonnay that had gone with it.

Except Persephone was grinning and patting the seat next to her, and Ariadne could only take that as an invitation.

“No Hades?” Ariadne asked after she rounded the table and sat down. She supposed it was possible that Hades might take the chair between Hera and Demeter, but … Persephone and Hades had been married longer than Ariadne had been alive, and he and Demeter never sat or stood near each other without Persephone in between to act as a physical and emotional buffer.

Persephone sighed. “No, he couldn’t get away. So I’m here for the Underworld.” She absently twisted her wedding ring around her finger. “But what about you? How’s Los Angeles? And what are you two working on now?”

“Hot,” Ariadne laughed. “And we’re looking at scripts. Dionysus wants to see if we can pitch in with a few indie films.”

“Because if I am on the set of another franchise feature that is more concerned with selling popcorn and keeping secrets than telling a coherent story, I am going to _scream_ ,” Dionysus said before Persephone could ask why.

“I thought you liked popcorn movies,” Artemis said.

“It’s less the popcorn than the secrets,” Dionysus admitted, and might have said more, but for the door opening again and revealing … a baking pan?

“So sorry I’m late!” After the baking pan came Hestia, hands still covered by oven mitts. “The baklava took a little longer than I was expecting.”

“Baklava!” cried Artemis – although it might have been any of them. There were few things that could bring the gods of Olympus and their companions together in anything like peace or harmony, but Hestia’s baklava was one of them.

The next few minutes were taken up by the cutting up of the pastry, the passing of plates and forks, and the idle chit-chat of a family that was often scattered to the winds. As soon as the food was handed out, Hestia took the empty chair between Hera and Demeter.

But there was still one chair left. And they still hadn’t started with … whatever Zeus had called them here for. Zeus himself was uncharacteristically silent, glancing between his plate, his wristwatch, and Hera. The looks he shot the latter were annoyed and rapidly running low on patience.

Hera’s only response was to raise an eyebrow or roll her eyes.

Ariadne settled back and let the chatter wash over her. Dionysus was distracted – Ares had finally seen _Wonder Woman_ and was demanding that Dionysus justify the “character assassination” to which he had been subjected (“David Thewlis, _really_? With that mustache?”). Persephone had been roped into the conversation Demeter was having with Hestia. The twins had gone back to their whispering.

And it was all fine, really. Given how distracted everyone around her was, maybe she’d even be able to sneak another slice of baklava. That was well worth being ignored and studiously not wondering why she’d even been invited to this gathering.

Just as Ariadne was eyeing the baklava, the door opened again, and in walked a being that – from the top of her blond pigtails to the jagged hem of her crop top, the artful rips on her fishnet stockings, and her knee-high pony boots – could only be termed a _disaster_.

“Huh.” The disaster still had one hand on the doorknob, the other on her hip as she surveyed the room. “Did I spend too long playing in traffic?”

A long-suffering sigh from Hera. “Eris.”

“I’ll take that as a polite way of saying ‘sit your ass down, we’ve been waiting for you,’” Eris replied.

“Thank you, dear.”

Eris flashed her mother a sunny smile and rounded the table to the only empty seat left. Not that she sat in it right away. “Shove over, thigh-baby.[4]” Not giving Dionysus the chance to refuse, she pushed his chair over and squeezed her own in the space that had appeared between Dionysus and Ariadne.

Then she dropped into the seat and flashed Ariadne a grin. “Hi, Ari! How’s tricks?”

“Hello,” replied Ariadne.

And that was all she had a chance to say before Zeus cleared his throat. Like lightning, the sound was enough to quiet the room as all counted the seconds before the thunder.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” Zeus said. “Now that we’re all here – let’s get started.”

He nodded once to Hephaestus, who tapped a few times on the laptop. The lights dimmed and the projector whirred to life.

“I’d like to begin by thanking all of you for coming – I understand that the notice was short and the meeting place unconventional.” Zeus smiled and nodded in a way that somehow managed to encompass everyone in the room. “However, I assure you that there is a reason for both, which I’m sure you’ll understand by the time I reach the end of this.”

Here he paused, letting stormy gray eyes rest on each of them in turn. “I also must insist on discretion. Nothing that is mentioned from this point forward can be discussed with anyone outside this room.”

Ariadne’s eyebrows arched. Well. Maybe that was why she had been invited along. The idea that Dionysus wouldn’t tell her, eventually, what had happened here was ludicrous. Easier to just pull out a chair for her and be done with it.

Or maybe not. Persephone was clearing her throat. “Father.”

“Zeus,” Poseidon said, in much the same tone.

Zeus waved a hand graciously. “Persephone, Poseidon – you may share this with those of your people who you think need to know about it. That being said,” Zeus’s gaze turned to the projector screen, “let’s get started. Hephaestus?”

Hephaestus tapped the mousepad, and a picture appeared on the screen. Ariadne frowned. She had more experience with photographs and cameras than anyone else in this room (except Apollo and of course Dionysus), and unless all that experience had chosen to desert her now, she thought she was looking at a satellite photo of a military base. Perhaps an airfield. The bigger buildings could be hangars.

“What we’re all seeing is Upper Tadfield Air Base,” said Zeus. “Located between North London and Oxford, it’s an American military installation first set up in the 1960s. And on Saturday last, it was the scene of … an incident.”

Zeus nodded at Hephaestus. The satellite picture vanished, only to be replaced by a blurry traffic photo of four motorcyclists – two in all-black leathers, one in all-white leathers, and one in all-red leathers – running through a stop light.

“These four appeared at the airbase and did their best …” Zeus paused. “To end the world.”

“Eh?” asked Ares. It was the first noise anyone had made since Zeus started talking.

Zeus ignored him. The photo on the projector shifted. Now a handsome black man with a trim black beard smiled down at them from the screen. He had one elbow on a stack of books, the other hand gesturing to a spread of empty plates before him.

“Dr. Raven Sable,” Zeus said. “A renowned—”

Demeter’s hands slammed down on the table. Ariadne jumped, and she wasn’t the only one.

“ _Doctor_?” Demeter snarled. “That’s what that asshole is calling himself these days? _Doctor_?”

Zeus blinked. “Demeter—”

“If _he’s_ a doctor, _any_ kind of doctor, _I’m_ a Teletubby!”

“Demi, really—” Hestia said, starting to rub Demeter’s back.

“What _he_ is,” Demeter continued, pointing to the screen, “is—”

“The personification of Famine,” Zeus interrupted. “As I was about to say. The rest of you can Google his persona – for now, we’d best move on. Hephaestus?”

Once again the picture shifted. Now a young – woman? Man? Non-binary person? – of Asian descent appeared on the screen. The most distinctive things about their appearance were their hair – a blond so light it was practically white – and their eyes – light blue that bordered, again, on white.

“ _Them_ ,” growled Artemis. Ariadne glanced across the table to see Apollo’s hand on Artemis’s shoulder, ready to comfort her or hold her down. Or both.

“Chalky White,” Zeus said. “Personification of Pollution.” He quickly nodded to Hephaestus.

Now the screen showed a young, pretty Caucasian woman. Her hair was red, and the camera had caught her sidelong, frowning at a notebook in her hand.

“Uh oh,” Ares said.

“Isn’t that Carmine?” Aphrodite asked.

“Who?” asked Poseidon.

“Carmine Zuigiber,” Ares muttered. “She’s a war correspondent. And. Um. War. Y’know, the personification of it.” He scratched the back of his neck. “We, uh, tend to run in the same circles … you know?”

“Quite,” Zeus said. Once again, he nodded to Hephaestus, and once again, the image on the screen changed.

Ariadne winced. This was another grainy still from a traffic camera, showing a tractor-trailer on its side. Sticking out from underneath the capsized truck was the back end of a small sedan. The front end was …

Best not to think about it.

“Ethereal filter,” Zeus said. Hephaestus tapped the trackpad.

The image was overlaid with a kaleidoscope of color – pinks and blues and teals invisible to (most) humans and only visible to gods and immortals when they cared to concentrate. Yet within this riot of color, right next to the half-crushed sedan was darkness: a black-robed, black-winged figure with its back to the camera. If Ariadne squinted – even the ethereal filter couldn’t do much to improve image quality – she thought she could make out a tall staff topped with a long, sharp blade in the figure’s right hand …

“Azrael,” Persephone whispered. Then, when several sets of eyes turned to her, she sighed. “Thanatos has a poker night with him, Anubis, and Yama every other Tuesday. They’ve been doing it for … oh my …”

“Since the invention of Tuesdays, I’d wager,” Zeus filled in for her. “And for those of you who are slower on the uptake – Azrael is also known as Death.”

“So what were they all doing at an American airbase in Wales?” Poseidon asked.

“England,” Zeus corrected. “And that … is what we are coming to.”

Once again, the screen switched, showing the airbase from above.

“As far as we can determine – thanks to Hephaestus and Hermes – these four entities managed to outwit airbase’s security and make their way to a top-secret area of the base. The entities then sawed their way into—”

“I’ll take it from here, Pater, thanks.” That was Hermes, finally looking up from his phone. His gaze swept around the table once. “I’ll skip the technical explanation none of you would understand, or frankly, care about. To make a long story short, these jokers,” he jerked his head at the screen, “nearly set off every nuclear device on the planet.”

The cacophony was immediate and deafening.

“ _What_?”

“How?”

“Why?”

“Why are we only finding out about this now?”

“What stopped them?”

“ _A-HEM_!” Zeus’s voice cracked like lightning and boomed like thunder.

The cacophony died.

“Thanks, Pater,” Hermes said. “To answer your questions – what: the world nearly ended. How: trust me when I say the technical details are not important. Why: we’re getting to that. Why are you only finding out about this now: because we had to confirm it before we shared it with you all. What stopped them …”

He glanced at Hephaestus. “That’s your cue, bro.”

Once again, the image on the screen changed. This time it became a montage of seven photos: three yearbook photos of pre-teens, three driver’s license photos, and one passport photo. Pictured were a brown-haired young boy with glasses, a scrubby-looking black-haired boy, a girl with curly black hair and an expression suggesting she’d like to punch out the photographer, an older blond woman, an suspicious-looking elderly man, a blue-eyed young man with glasses, and a dark-haired, brown-skinned woman with all-too-knowing eyes.

Pointing to each of the photos in turn, Hermes said, “Jeremy Wensleydale, Brian Galkoff, and – this poor kid, I _feel_ for her – Pippin Galadriel Moonchild Ris. And the adults are Marjorie Potts, currently trading as Madame Tracy; Michael Shadwell, Sergeant in the Witchfinder Army – which, yes, apparently is a thing; Newton Pulsifer, who, if any of you know why that name is ringing a bell for me, _please_ tell me because it’s been driving me insane; and Anathema Device, whose parents will probably be forgiven far sooner than Pippin’s will. All of them British, except the Device woman, she’s American. The three kids live in Tadfield; we’re still figuring out what’s up with the adults. But they were all present at the airbase when … well …”

Hermes nodded to Hephaestus, and now a single picture appeared on the screen. It was another yearbook photo. A tousle-haired boy grinned at the camera. His smile was warm and genuine, and if his eyes brimmed over with mischief, well, he was just a kid, so what could the harm be?

“This kid – Adam Young according to official records – told the combined forces of Heaven and Hell to take a long walk off a short pier.”

Silence.

“When … when you say ‘Heaven and Hell,’” Hestia said, very slowly, “do you mean …”

“The Abrahamic divinities,” Athena answered. She glanced at Hermes, who made a “go on” gesture. “Whom Famine, Pollution, etc. are affiliated with. Apparently, this was their attempt to bring about their foretold Armageddon.”

“ _WHAT_?”

The cry seemed to come from every corner of the room at once.

“So, wait. Wait, wait, wait,” Artemis said. “Are you telling me – are you _telling me_ – that the Abrahamics aren’t happy with having however-many-billion followers? That that’s not enough for them? That they have to use their followers’ tech to—”

“Destroy the world as we know it? Yep. That’s exactly what we’re saying,” Hermes said.

“ _Why_?”

Hermes shrugged.

“It’s rather complicated,” Athena answered, because of course she would say that.

“Then give us the simple version. Please,” Apollo said.

Athena sat very still, her eyes going unfocused. “Very well. To summarize a very long and complex history …”

She took a deep breath. “The Abrahamic divinities are divided in two main camps, Heaven and Hell. They have been at war since their inception. Their plan, since either side was capable of forming a plan, has always been to destroy all life on Earth and then have a grand battle to destroy each other. To that end, the forces of Heaven created the Christ—”

“That Jesus fellow?” Apollo interrupted.

“Indeed,” Athena replied. “And the forces of Hell created the Antichrist. To wit …”

She swallowed and gestured to the screen. “Young … Adam.”

“But,” Hestia said, “but you just said—well, Hermes just said—that the boy told both sides to stop fighting. And they—listened?”

“We are still confirming details,” Athena said with a sigh. “But we think …”

She glanced sidelong at Hephaestus. And the screen shifted.

“That these two had something to do with it.”

Ariadne’s eyes went wide.

The screen showed, once again, a collage of pictures. Two men walking through a park. Two men getting into (or out of; the picture wasn’t clear) a black antique car in front of a corner shop. Two men side-by-side in a restaurant, one sitting like he was being graded on deportment and the other like he was getting points for slouching.

_Blondie and Sunglasses!_

“Pictured on the screen are the beings known as Aziraphale and Crowley. They have been active in London for quite some time; in fact, Aziraphale owns a rare book shop in Soho—”

Zeus cleared his throat.

Athena blushed. “Er—right. Hephaestus, could you turn on the ethereal filters, please?”

Once again, the photos exploded in color. And Ariadne sucked in a gasp.

“As you can see, both beings have wings – the mark of an angel, that is, one of the forces of Heaven, and a demon, one of the forces of Hell. The white wings are the angel’s, the black wings the demon’s.”

“Which is which? I mean—which is Aziraphale, and which is Crowley?” Ariadne heard herself ask.

Everyone turned to look at her. Or at least she thought they did. The vague movement that she saw from the corner of her eye would track with that. But to confirm it would have meant looking away from the screen, and Ariadne was nowhere near ready to do that yet.

“Er, the angel is Aziraphale, the demon is Crowley. Why?” Athena asked.

“We saw them,” Dionysus answered. Once again, Ariadne saw vague movement from the corner of her eye. “Right before we came here. They were having lunch at the Ritz. Since that’s where we’re staying … it’d be nice to know exactly what we’re dealing with, should we run into them again.”

“Nobody is going to be running into _anyone_ without my express permission,” Zeus said.

That started an argument. Or at least Ariadne thought it did. The voices rose and fell around her, but she wasn’t listening. She didn’t care.

She was too busy staring at the screen.

White wings, black wings.

Angel, demon.

_So then … could they help me figure out what gray wings mean?_

* * *

Zeus’s “family meeting” had sparked or stoked a hundred arguments. This did not come as a surprise to Hera. The gods of Olympus had been fractious since the day they overthrew the Titans, and there were far too many of them to reach any decision without having to shout down a multitude of different opinions. That was part of the reason why Zeus preferred to rule by decree rather than consensus.

But that was not what concerned Hera.

She’d already known most of what had been shared at the meeting. Communication was the key to any marriage, especially one spanning millennia, and she and Zeus had discovered that they were both much happier when their marriage had as few secrets as could be managed.

Which was part of the reason why Hera remained in the room after Zeus had adjourned the family meeting, with only Hephaestus and Zeus left beside her. And Hephaestus, Hera sensed, would be gone as soon as the projector and laptop were shut down.

She couldn’t let that happen. Well, the laptop shutting down. Hephaestus could do what he pleased with the projector and the rest of his afternoon.

“Hephaestus? Could you be a dear and let me see the laptop once you’re done with it? No need to close any programs.”

Hephaestus looked up. “Certainly, Mother.” He frowned. “Is everything all right?”

“Of course.”

Hephaestus’s gaze slid to his father, but Zeus was too busy staring at his phone to notice. Probably texting Odin again. The advent of instantaneous communication had done wonders for inter-pantheon relations. Even Hermes didn’t mind losing one of his traditional duties, given all the things it freed up his time for.

Sensing no help from that quarter, Hephaestus waved his hand. The laptop floated above the mirror-polished conference table, coming to rest just in front of Hera.

She allowed herself a small smile. As she had hoped, Hephaestus hadn’t closed PowerPoint. She scrolled back through the slides detailing the communications with other pantheons and tentative plans for responses until she found the ones she wanted.

The angel and the demon. With and without the ethereal filters.

Staring at the laptop, chin resting on her hand and frowning, Hera flipped back and forth between the two slides.

She hadn’t watched the PowerPoint as Zeus, Hermes, and Athena filled the rest of the family in on what had happened. Instead, she had watched the room.

She’d seen very little to surprise her. She had expected Demeter’s and Artemis’s murderous reactions to Famine and Pollution respectively, as she had Ares’s and Persephone’s admissions of being acquainted with War and Death. And nothing about the gods’ reactions to the plot to destroy the world and the revelation of the preteen Antichrist had surprised her.

But Ariadne …

Ariadne’s reactions had been a surprise.

Ariadne wasn’t one of them. Poseidon had put it inelegantly, pointing out that this was meant to be a _family_ meeting, but he had not been wrong. Ariadne wasn’t family, not least because she and Dionysus had never bothered to solemnize their union.

She wasn’t from the same stock as they were. Even Aphrodite, though not descended from Kronos and Rhea, could at least claim descent of a kind from Ouranos. Ariadne? For all that she had been raised by Minos, a son of Zeus, and Pasiphaë, a daughter of Helios and a granddaughter of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys, she was not their child. Not by blood.

Really, Dionysus should have put that together when he first found her on Naxos. But he hadn’t. He’d been as shocked as the rest of them when Athena, acting under Zeus’s orders, had performed a few discreet experiments and revealed that Ariadne was not an Olympian. Or a Titan. Or a Giant or _anything_ that the rest of them recognized.

But now …

Hera flipped to the filtered photos.

Those wings. It had been centuries since she had last seen them, but a pair of enormous, dove-gray wings was rather hard to forget. They had looked about the same size – at least relative to the size of Ariadne’s body – as the wings on the angel and demon. Same shape as well. And the color … assuming the filter wasn’t distorting the colors of these wings too much, the color of Ariadne’s wings was right in between the white of the angel’s wings and the black of the demon’s.

As for the angel and demon themselves …

Hera scrolled to the unfiltered photos.

That red hair – there was no question that the it was distinctive. Mortal hair didn’t come in that shade naturally, and while it was possible to create it with dye or an illusion, there was little reason for a demon to do that. And Ariadne had never done so either, as far as Hera was aware. Given the wings, there was no way to pass the hair color off as a coincidence.

But it wasn’t just the hair or even the wings. Hera could see traces of the angel in Ariadne as well. The way he clasped his hands over his stomach; Ariadne sat like that sometimes. That smug little smile. Even his eyes.

True, both beings were male-shaped, but in Hera’s experience, that mattered very little. Gender was just a guideline. Her own husband had given birth. Twice.

Speaking of her husband …

Hera looked up. Hephaestus had wheeled himself out while she was busy with the laptop. Zeus was still on his phone.

“Zeus?” Hera asked.

“Hmm?”

“Hermes managed to find the address of the angel’s bookshop, didn’t he?”

“Of course he did; he texted it to me the other …” Zeus trailed off.

He looked up.

“Hera.”

She sent him a look that was equal parts inquiry and invitation.

“I specifically stated,” and his tone brooked no argument, “that no one was to contact _any_ of the players in this little drama. That includes you.”

“That is not what you said.”

“It most certainly is—”

“You said,” and now Hera’s tone brooked no argument, “that no one was to contact any of the players without your _express permission_.” She fluttered her lashes at him. “Which is why I am giving you the chance to express your permission now, dear.”

“And if I don’t?” Zeus asked.

Hera simply raised an eyebrow.

Stormy gray eyes met cow eyes, and for a few brief moments, battle was joined.

It was over quickly – their relationship really _had_ immeasurably improved over the past century. Zeus sighed and turned back to his phone.

“I’ll drive you over tomorrow.”

* * *

It was a well-known fact that both the forces of Heaven and Hell considered the Earth – indeed, the universe – to be their oyster. That was why both sides were so confident that they could destroy it without facing repercussions. It was the foundation of their existences, as certain as up was up and down was down.

However, even before an angel, a demon, and an Antichrist teamed up to tell the Heavenly and Hellish hosts where they could stick their Apocalypse, there were cracks in that foundation. One was that other divine and immortal beings existed.

Another was that, all things considered, it was better to get along with the neighbors than it was to fight with them.[5]

Following from that was the realization that if certain locales were considered sacred to certain pantheons, it was perhaps best for everyone if those locales were left to the care of those pantheons.[6]

These facts went a long way toward explaining why a demon was lurking at the excavation site of the old temple at Uppåkra, Sweden, waiting for an angel.

The demon was not Crowley. While Crowley’s appearance, especially over that past few hundred years, had trended closer to “flash bastard” than “archfiend of Hell,” this demon seemed to lean into the latter. Though short, he had dark hair slicked back to reveal a poetic widow’s peak and saturnine features. He even had a long, pointy goatee. Should a local theater troupe have been passing by, looking for a last-minute understudy for that evening’s production of _Doctor Faustus_ – based on looks alone, acting ability and knowledge of the local language be damned – they would have fallen to their knees and sent praise to any powers above (or Below) who happened to be listening, thanking them for throwing a prime Mephistopheles into their path.

This would make perfect sense given that the demon in question was, in fact, Mephistopheles. He’d worn this corporation for the better part of a thousand years, and a whole string of clichés had grown up around it.

At the moment, though, he did not look particularly demonic. He looked worried.

The past week had been … Mephistopheles would say _hellish_ , except that described every single one of his weeks since taking a tumble from grace. Perhaps _godawful_ would be better. It wasn’t just the failed Apocalypse, six thousand years of striving and plotting gone up in smoke the way the world hadn’t. It was _how_ it had all gone up in smoke: an angel and a demon had been working together, going against both sides to stop it.

And they’d _gotten away with it_. The so-called demon Crowley had survived a bath in Holy Water! Half of Hell had seen him do it! And if the rumors filtering down from Heaven were at all accurate, then the so-called angel Aziraphale had managed the same trick in reverse.

It was enough to worry any self-respecting demon, and that was before he even considered the other rumors that had been swarming through Hell …

“Sorry I’m late.”

Mephistopheles did not jump. But the breath he didn’t technically need caught in his throat.

Slowly, he turned around. Slowly, he nodded. “Hello, Samael.”

“Yes, yes, let’s dispense with the pleasantries, shall we?” Samael’s hands were trembling as she fumbled with a lighter and a cigarette. “What have you got?”

“Here,” Mephistopheles said. He snapped his fingers, and a small lick of flame appeared on his thumb.

Samael watched it.

She smirked.

She lit her cigarette, brought it to her lips, and took a long drag that consumed nearly half of it. Then she breathed out, wreathing her face in smoke that would not have looked out of place in the deepest part of the Pit. Not for the first time, Mephistopheles reflected that it was a good thing that angelic corporations were immune from cancer and that demonic corporations did not need to breathe.

All the same, he summoned a small breeze to keep the smoke firmly downwind of him.

“So,” he said.

“So,” Samael replied. She leaned against a tree trunk, her coat bunching awkwardly around her curves. “As far as Upstairs is concerned, Armageddon is officially off. Caput. Finished.”

“Well … bless it.”

“And Downstairs?”

Mephistopheles shrugged. “No one’s happy about how the past week has gone. Especially the … attempted extinction of Crowley.” His eyes narrowed. “That _was_ Holy Water that Michael came down with, wasn’t it?”

“The Holiest. I _checked_.” Samael’s growl reminded Mephistopheles that she was, among other things, the Archangel of Destruction. He tried not to shudder.

And felt ashamed. Because really … if this whole partnership was not about mutually assured destruction, then what in Hell’s name _was_ it about?

Samael took another drag of the cigarette, consuming it down to the filter. Which she absently flicked away before digging in her pockets for another one. “And the Hellfire?”

“As Hellish as it could be. Downstairs wanted Aziraphale gone as much as Upstairs wanted Crowley gone.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic.” Samael’s annoyed huff was briefly broken by a smile as she found another cigarette. This time her lighter cooperated with her. “Unfortunately, it gets worse.”

Mephistopheles sighed. Of course it did.

“We’ve been getting … messages.” Samael raised an eyebrow. “From _everyone_.”

Mephistopheles winced.

“Your lot, too?”

“So I’ve heard.” He sighed. “I don’t see why the lower-downs care that everyone is – er – upset now. They never did before.”

“Well, _before_ , the war was supposed to _happen_ , and everyone being upset with us for starting it would have been the least of our problems. Now …” Samael shrugged. “Now, we actually have to deal with the neighbors.”

The cigarette in her fingers started to tremble. “And …”

Mephistopheles frowned. “And?”

“I heard Michael talking to Gabriel. There’s talk of … getting rid of back channels.”

Mephistopheles blinked. And his jaw fell. “ _Getting rid of back channels_?”

It wouldn’t affect them; their little partnership wasn’t “back channels.” More like the static between the channels, showing hints of pictures and snatches of dialogue. Definitely not on the cable plan, but real all the same.

“That’s—that’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. Just—stop talking? _Now_? I know neither of our Sides cares much about, um, interfaith relations, but with _everyone_ annoyed with us—”

“I may have misspoken. It’s not so much getting rid of the back channels as …” Samael took a long, fortifying drag of her cigarette. “Turning them into front channels.”

_Front … channels?_

Mephistopheles almost asked Samael for a cigarette. He’d never smoked, but now seemed like a good time to start.

Because if there were going to be front channels – if Heaven and Hell were to, to put it one way, resume diplomatic relations? Especially if the current interfaith crisis proved to be particularly difficult or thorny?

Well. There were few better things to use to unite two warring factions than a common enemy. Or a host of common enemies. And there were few bonds stronger than those of brothers-in-arms.

Which meant …

If something didn’t happen – and soon – to get Heaven and Hell back on a war footing with each other, then Armageddon might be well and truly off. Forever.

And for him … Mephistopheles suddenly saw eternity stretching before him. An eternity of faux-cheerful posters stuck on damp, dark walls. Endless miserable temptations just to win more human souls to be miserable with them Down Below.

No joy. No light. No love. And no hope of a final battle to end it all – or failing that, Samael revealing their connection and ensuring that his own side would eliminate him.

He looked at Samael, and by the way she was taking quick puff-puff-puffs of her cigarette, he could imagine she was seeing the same godawful future for herself.

“What are we going to do?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” Samael admitted. “But we damn well need to think of something – and we need to do it fast.” 

* * *

[1] Metaphorically speaking, given the state of the traffic.

[2] Due, in no small part, to the sunglasses.

[3] Roundabouts didn’t leave much room for conversation.

[4] Hat tip to The Z List by chellerrific <https://archiveofourown.org/works/3816202>.

[5] If only so that both sides could concentrate their firepower on each other.

[6] Unless, of course, humans decided to switch which beings were worshipped in the space. Which always made for interesting conversations with the neighbors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
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	3. All I Ever Get From Your Family Ties

With a smile, Aziraphale turned the sign on the bookshop door to “Sorry, We’re Closed.” He’d been open for a full forty-five minutes today. While that was hardly a record,[1] it was plenty to be getting on with.

Besides, Aziraphale had so many other things to _do_ – things for him, even, not things for Upstairs! Chasing customers away would have just been a distraction. There were shelves to dust, restaurant reviews to read, old favorites to revisit now that he’d have time, and oh, he really ought to get around to cataloguing all those lovely books Adam had gifted to him when he restored the shop.

Yet one thing he would not be doing was starting the search for the being he still thought of as _the baby_ , for two reasons. One, even after a pleasant evening of drinks here at the shop, Crowley was still pretending to not be convinced that searching for her was a good idea – and Aziraphale was determined that they would search for her Together or Not at All. Second …

Well, this might have been cheating, given his earlier resolution. But the fact remained that trying to find a baby one had given up for adoption, as it were, was not an easy feat. It was hard enough for humans in the modern age, with things like legal records and DNA testing and private detectives. Add in a few thousand years and a complete and total lack of any of those things, and what Aziraphale had on his hands was a pickle.

He’d need to think about this. Or better yet, not-think about this. Let the problem come to a boil and then have the ideas steep in the back of his mind long enough, and perhaps by the time Crowley agreed that it was time to find the baby, Aziraphale would have a perfectly brewed action plan ready to go.

Speaking of which, he really ought to get the kettle on, especially if he was going to be cataloging those books—

The sound of the shop-bell tinkling stopped that merry thought in its tracks. “I’m _terribly_ sorry,” Aziraphale began to say, even before he’d properly turned around, “but I’m afraid we’re closed.”

“I know. I waited until you turned the sign over for a reason.”

_That_ made Aziraphale turn around rather faster.

But whatever he had been expecting to find—

This wasn’t it.

Before him, just a few steps away from the shop door, stood a tall, middle-aged woman. Her ebony hair was coiled on her head in the kind of complicated, crown-like style that most human women had to pay someone else to accomplish, and she was really quite beautiful – classically so, even.[2] And she was impeccably styled from the top of her well-tailored sheath dress to the heels of her sensible-but-still-fashionable pumps and the peacock-feather-emblazoned bag that hung from her shoulder.

But more importantly than that, there was something about her air, her aura if one would, that skittered across Aziraphale’s _other_ senses and screamed, _NOT HUMAN, NOT HUMAN, NOT HUMAN!_

Aziraphale took a full step backward, and for the first time since a rather awkward conversation outside the walls of Eden, _really_ wished he had his flaming sword back. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

The woman – or female-shaped being – held both of her hands up, palms out. “Do not be afraid—oh, wait, that’s your line, isn’t it?” She chuckled.

Aziraphale failed to see what was funny.

She sighed. And then, with a flick of her wrist,[3] a small rectangle of high-quality cardstock appeared in her hand. “My card,” she said, quite unnecessarily.

He didn’t take it. It struck him as being quite worth the “frivolous” miracle to simply arrange for it to appear where he could read it. So he did.

And he frowned.

What the card said was _June Chronides, Marriage and Family Counselor_ , followed by an address and a phone number.

“Oh, sorry, wrong card,” the lady – Ms. Chronides – said, and snapped her fingers.

Now the card read:

_Hera_

_Goddess of Women, Marriage, and the Family_

_Queen of the Olympian Gods_

In Homeric Greek.

Aziraphale felt his throat go dry. “Your—Majesty,” he croaked. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” He clasped his hands behind him and smiled as politely as he could manage, all while trying very hard to _think_.

Something about this made the left side of Hera’s mouth quirk slowly upward. “Oh, you do look like her. Or does she look like you?”

“I—beg your pardon?”

“Come,” Hera said, and she swept past him as if this was _her_ bookshop, not his, and moreover, as if she knew exactly where the back room was. “We should sit down. This could take some time.” She tossed him a glance over her shoulder. “And _xenia_ is very important among my people.”

_Xenia_ – sacred hospitality. Aziraphale had done enough reading to take the hint. “Can I get you something to eat? Or drink?”

“If you wouldn’t mind. You strike me as being very English – I don’t suppose I could trouble you for a cup of tea?”

Tea Aziraphale could manage. But this was not the time to do it the old-fashioned way. “Of course,” he said, following her into the back room, where a pot of freshly brewed Earl Grey awaited them.

Hera looked at him over her shoulder again, and this time, she smiled. “You are no fool, Angel of the Eastern Gate.”

Aziraphale tried very, very hard not to show how bothered he was by the fact that she knew that. He was fairly certain that he did not succeed.

“Although,” Hera continued, helping herself to the tea and the artfully cut-up lemons that came with it, “perhaps a touch unsubtle. A.Z. Fell, _really_?” She arched a delicate brow as Aziraphale sat down.

“In—in my line of work,” Aziraphale stumbled, “honesty is considered the best policy.”

She nodded, conceding the point. “But of course. Still, all the same, Heaven ought to have expected that you’d make trouble sooner or later.” She smirked. “Fire-bringers always do.”

Aziraphale’s eyes went wide and his stomach dropped to the vicinity of his feet.[4]

“Oh, don’t look like that. My husband hasn’t had anyone chained up in the Caucasus for millennia.” She took a delicate sip of her tea. “Anyway. I didn’t come all this way to talk shop. I came here to discuss your daughter.”

The part of Aziraphale that was small, and petty, and that enjoyed nice things and nice experiences, was very glad that he hadn’t actually dared to pick up the teacup that was nominally for him. He never would have been able to hold onto it, and that would have been a terrible waste of good tea and good china.

The much _larger_ part – the part that was a being of love with something to protect – didn’t allow the rest of him to so much as blink.

“My what?” he asked, striving to sound confused.

Hera rolled her eyes. “Please. There are a number of beings in the universe you might fool with that, but I am not one of them.” She fixed him with a _look_ over her teacup. “Do recall what I am the goddess of.”

Aziraphale recalled. Even so, he folded his hands in his lap and fixed her with his most beatific and slightly dotty smile.

She shifted slightly on the sofa and poured herself another cup of tea. “I have to wonder, though, was it you or was it your partner in crime – among other things – who dropped her off at Knossos? Though I’m sure she doesn’t blame you for that. You couldn’t have predicted the mess you were dropping her into.”

_Mess?_ thought one part of Aziraphale, while another wondered, _Knossos?_

And then, a third part: _Oh, no._

“Knossos,” Aziraphale said, “isn’t that on Crete?”

“Indeed. The palace built atop the labyrinth.”

“Now, I believe modern archaeological evidence suggests—”

Hera shot him a look that killed that sentence in its tracks. “Principality,” she said, “you know as well as I do that the archaeologists’ opinions of the past are as trustworthy as the paleontologists’.”

Aziraphale gulped. “Quite.”

“And that being said,” Hera went on, “you also know as well as I do that there _was_ a labyrinth, and a Minotaur, and … a young lady who knew the secret of the labyrinth, how to get in, and how to get out. A young lady with red hair … blue eyes … and gray wings.”

Aziraphale’s throat was dry as the desert that had surrounded Eden. But he didn’t dare grab a teacup. His hands might give him away.

Instead he forced a little smile, clasped his hands more firmly together, and said, “Forgive me, but I don’t remember wings ever being part of the legend?”

“They were edited out of the official version. They didn’t quite fit, you see. And we both know what mortals do with things that don’t quite fit.”

“Humans can be quite cruel,” Aziraphale agreed, even as he thought, _And not just humans._

Something about that made Hera sit up and put her teacup down. Crossing one leg primly over the other, she clasped her knee in both hands, tilted her head to one side, and surveyed Aziraphale with frank puzzlement. “You’re just bound and determined not to give anything up, aren’t you?”

“Ma’am, I’m sure I—”

“No, you’re not. Or if you are, you’re wrong.” She sat back, frowning. “You’re afraid.”

Aziraphale judged it prudent to neither confirm nor deny that.

“Hmm.” Hera frowned. “Perhaps it’s time I laid my cards on the table.”

She opened her bag and leafed through it. “Here,” she said, tossing something on the table between them. “You have no idea how long it took me to find a picture with just her – your daughter is _quite_ camera-shy.”

In spite of himself, Aziraphale leaned forward to survey the object on the coffee table.

It was a photograph. If Aziraphale was any judge of the fashions in the photo – which he was, somewhat, just because he chose not to change _his_ style more than absolutely necessary didn’t mean that he was completely unaware of how the humans changed _theirs_ – the picture had been taken about fifty years beforehand.

What it showed was a young woman on a lounge chair in a bathing dress. She wore a wide, floppy hat and almost comically large sunglasses. She wasn’t looking at the camera; her attention appeared to be fully absorbed by the book in her lap.

Still. Despite the sunglasses and hat that shaded her face, and despite the fading of the photograph, Aziraphale recognized her.

It was the young lady from the Ritz.

Aziraphale was not able to keep in his gasp.

And Hera must have heard it. “You can keep the photograph. I have copies.” Her voice was rich with a laugh held back. “And you can keep this, too.” Hera pushed her card across to him. “My mobile is on the back. I don’t sleep, so call me whenever you’re ready to request her contact information.”

Aziraphale barely glanced at the card, too focused on the photograph. It wasn’t until he heard the click of heels on wooden floors that he realized that Hera was leaving.

“Wait!” he called out.

Hera turned around.

She thought she’d won. That much was clear in the way her hand rested on her hip and the smile that poked at the corners of her mouth. She thought he was about to give it all up.

Well, she was wrong. Aziraphale had already given up far more than he had wanted to someone he had no reason to trust. Besides, this wasn’t just his decision to make.

He could ask a question, though.

“What is in all this for you?”

And Hera smiled.

“You’ll find out when you’re ready to request an introduction.”

* * *

“It’s a trap.”

Crowley barely let Aziraphale get to the end of his story before he said it. And he was up, prowling around the back room, pacing back and forth as if that would solve anything.

“No bloody way it could be anything else. I mean, really, we save the world, we save ourselves, and not, what, thirty seconds later, we see a girl who could be _her_ dining in the Ritz? And _then_ Hera shows up on your doorstep offering to give us her phone number? There are horror movie traps less obvious than this!”

“That is certainly one way to look at it; however—”

“No. No, it’s not just one way to look at it, it’s _the_ way to look at it. Angel,” and here Crowley slid onto the lumpy sofa, the sofa he’d occupied for so many nights as he and the angel talked and laughed and drank and bullshitted and planned and argued and drank some more. “Look—take it from the one who wrote the bloody _book_ on temptation—”

Aziraphale’s raised eyebrows indicated skepticism.

Crowley glared. “Like I was saying – the person who wrote the book on temptation, me. Let me _tell_ you something. This? This is how you do _temptation_. Forget about apples. Apples are for amateurs. What you do—what you do is you find your victim, right, and then you find out what they _really_ want, and you dangle that right in front of their nose, but just out of reach, and you keep dangling it there until they’re practically falling over themselves to get it, and then – then! – they’re yours. Hook, line, sinker.”

“You know,” Aziraphale said, “I do know a thing or two about temptation myself.”

“Yes, yes, from filling in for me. Not the same thing. Anyway—”

“No, dear. From _thwarting_ you.”

That was enough to shut Crowley up for a moment.

Aziraphale smiled faintly and reached for his teacup. (He’d said quite firmly that this was not a conversation to have while drunk, and Crowley, to his slight shame, hadn’t even argued.) But while the smile was steady, the hand that reached for the teacup wasn’t. The rattle of bone china on bone china rang through the silent shop.

Crowley winced. The angel had just stood down a Greek deity all on his own – and not just any Greek deity, but the HBIC of that _extremely_ bitchy lot – and here Crowley was, making it worse by going off on a rant.

“It’s quite all right, dear boy,” Aziraphale said softly.

Crowley looked up.

Aziraphale’s smile was warm, accepting, even – dare Crowley even think it? – forgiving. Crowley couldn’t look at it long, but even as he looked away, he could have basked in the warmth all day.

Except they didn’t have time for that.

He sighed. “You were saying? About—knowing a thing or two about temptation?”

“Ah, yes, that.” Aziraphale put his teacup down. It rattled again. “You did rather hit the nail on the head yourself – when you said ‘you find out what they really want.’ You see, it logically follows that, in order to manage that particular feat, Hera has to know what we really want. So therefore …”

A hole rather like some of the more yawning pits of Hell opened up in Crowley’s stomach.

“I never breathed a word of it,” Crowley said. “Not once. Ever. Angel, I _swear_ —”

Aziraphale sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

For a minute Crowley was ready to fly off the handle. Because after all they had seen, and done, and been through together – all the risks he’d taken, all the risks they’d _both_ taken – Aziraphale thought he would lie? To him? Now? About _this_?

But before he could do that, Aziraphale finished his thought. “I haven’t said anything, either.”

_… Oh._

When looked at in _that_ light – well, yes, when thinking about it from _that_ perspective, Crowley was rather frightened himself. Because if Aziraphale hadn’t said anything – and Crowley hadn’t said anything – then there was only other player in this little drama Hera could have pumped for information. And that didn’t bear thinking of.

Except they had to.

Crowley swallowed. “Where—where did Hera say that she’d been … raised?”

“Knossos,” Aziraphale replied. He wouldn’t look at Crowley. Crowley wished he would, even though the way Aziraphale’s shoulders slumped told him that he wouldn’t like anything he saw if Aziraphale did. “On Crete.”

“Crete.” Crowley licked his lips to try to wet them, but it was no use, his mouth was dry as bone. Dry as the sands of Moriah.

He took a deep breath. But before he could speak, his own voice echoed down to him from across the ages.

_“I mean it, angel._ Don’t _tell me how it goes.”_

Any habit formed over thirty-eight hundred years would be hard to break.

Still, Crowley plunged forward and broke it anyway. “Is that – is that where you …” No, he wouldn’t say _left_ , not _left_ , that wasn’t the right word _at all_. “… Brought her? To Crete?”

Aziraphale was looking down at his teacup again. But his nod was clear enough.

“… Why Crete?”

The angel laughed. It was a thin little thing, the kind of laugh that well-meaning mothers the world over would want to take home and fatten up. “Because I thought she’d fit in there.”

Aziraphale looked up. “Oh, don’t give me that look.” (Crowley might have pointed out that he wasn’t giving the angel a _look_ , unless “complete and utter confusion” counted as a look, but now was not the time.) “We—we both know that she wasn’t going to be, well, human. I’ll admit hearing about the wings took me by surprise …”

Crowley made a wordless noise of assent.

“But—well, you know, the first time … I don’t know … the first time more dates miraculously appeared on her plate—”

“Dates?” Crowley asked, taking refuge in a joke because somebody had to. “You’re assuming her first miracle would have been about food? She’s mine too, you know.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “Or the first time she—she—drove her chariot right into a lamppost and somehow walked away with the chariot, lamppost, horses, and herself unscathed.” He raised an eyebrow, as if to ask, _Happy?_ before continuing. “The thing is—people would have realized that she was special.”

“And they’d be … less likely to realize that on Crete?”

“Not exactly—more …” Aziraphale waved a hand. “Look—you _know_ what the Greek deities are like. Or were like, back in those days. Couldn’t shy a stone without hitting a demigod!”

Crowley very nearly asked what that had to do with anything – and then he realized. “She … she really would blend in.”

Aziraphale smiled and wordlessly tipped his teacup to Crowley.

There really didn’t seem to be anything else to say after that. Well, there were many things to say, but none that Crowley could bring himself to say out loud.

So to give himself a break – to give into temptation, as it were – he asked a question. “Can I … can I see the picture?”

“Of _course_ , dear boy,” Aziraphale said, as if he was shocked that Crowley would even think he had to ask. Maybe he was. Crowley didn’t have the energy to ponder that now.

Not when Aziraphale was pushing a faded photo across the table to Crowley.

He took it gingerly, as if simply touching it would make it burst into flame. He saw at once that the girl in the photo was the girl from the Ritz, but that wasn’t what drew his attention. Not really. What he looked at instead was the floppy hat, the big sunglasses, the fact that she was looking at the book, not the camera. Trying to fade into the background in her own photo. Something in Crowley wrenched.

“Why,” Crowley asked – or started to ask; his throat was dry again, so he had to swallow. And as he did so, he turned the photo over, half-idly wondering if—

Ah, yes. Apparently Hera had picked up a few bad habits from the humans. On the back of the photo – in a strange sort of hand that had clearly first learned to write long before there were pens to write with or the Roman alphabet to write in – was a short inscription.

_Ariadne_

_Mexico City, 1968_

Crowley forgot what he was going to say. “Ariadne.”

Pretty name. And familiar-sounding. Crowley wondered why.

“Eh?”

“Ariadne,” Crowley repeated. “Her name.”

“Her—what?”

Crowley looked up. Aziraphale was goggling at him. “S’on the back of the photo,” Crowley answered, handing the picture back.

Aziraphale took it with a shaking hand. “Ariadne,” he said. “Yes, yes, of _course_ , that would be her name—”

Aziraphale may have had more to say. Crowley didn’t hear it.

He’d just remembered why the name _Ariadne_ sounded so familiar.

“ _SHIT_!”

Aziraphale jumped.

“Ariadne,” Crowley said, “and—and—Crete. And a maze. And—and that thing—you know, with—” He crooked his fingers on either side of his head, like horns.

Now Aziraphale winced.

“ _That’s_ where you l—brought her?”

“Well, I didn’t know they were hiding a monster in the basement! Otherwise I would have brought her somewhere else! All the children in the courtyard looked perfectly normal!”

“The who?”

Aziraphale looked away. “There—there were children, playing. In the courtyard of the palace. You—you have to understand, when I—when I got there, I wanted to find the best home for her—so, so I started at the top.”

Crowley had a feeling all of this was rather beside the point, but wisely didn’t say it out loud. Aziraphale said he hadn’t said a word about this to anyone. Maybe he just needed to talk.

If that was what Aziraphale needed, well, Crowley could listen.

“At the palace,” Aziraphale said, as if he hadn’t said that already. “And there were – there were children playing in the courtyard. Four of them. Three boys and a girl. And they seemed … they seemed well-cared for, and happy, and I _felt_ the love …”

Crowley decided not to try to swallow around the lump in his throat, and simply confined himself to a nod.

“Things were – were a bit hectic once I got into the palace – and, well, I listened around a bit, and I heard—I heard that the queen, the queen of that place, was in labor, and I thought, well, what luck! All I have to do is hand the baby off to the king, and muddle a few memories, and … and she’ll fit right in. They’ll just think the queen had twins, that’s all. So that’s what I did, and—”

Something _pinged_ in Crowley’s mind, and he sat up straight. “Wait—wait. You handed her off?”

Aziraphale blinked. “I—yes? Of course?”

“You gave her. To a person.”

“Whose memory I muddled! And, really, what else was I supposed to do?”

“Well, it’s much more customary to leave the baby in a basket at the door, or float it down the Nile—”

“ _Crowley_! That is _not_ how you give up a baby for adoption!”

In any other circumstances, this was an argument that could have lasted the rest of the afternoon and well into the night. This was not any other circumstances.

“So you were—responsible.” An idea was turning over in his mind, a scheme just starting to hatch.

“ _Yes_!”

“Which means that someone _else_ knows where you brought the baby.”

Aziraphale’s mouth opened.

It shut.

“I muddled his memory. I made,” his face started to go red, “I made _damn_ sure I muddled his memory!”

“Of course you did, not saying you didn’t, but …” Crowley rubbed the back of his neck. “D’you think that someone like, oh, I don’t know, _Hera_ couldn’t go and un _-_ muddle his memory?”

Aziraphale’s eyes went wide. “Oh … my.”

“But you see,” Crowley said, “this also works in our favor. Because, you see, since you gave the baby to someone – the king, you said? You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure!”

“Right, right, of course, of course – well, see, that means we have a witness. It means we can retrace our steps—well, _her_ steps—by starting at the beginning. Whether Hera’s right or wrong or whether this is a massive trap or not—we can _find out_. Without getting ourselves in hock to Hera.”

“But—but the beginning? Her beginning? The man has to be _long_ dead by now.”

“And?” Crowley arched an eyebrow. “Since when has talking to dead people ever been a problem for people like us?”

“We can’t exactly go showing our faces in Heaven or Hell now. Either of our faces.”

“Heaven or Hell? You think a Cretan king from whatever-century-it-was is going to end up in either of those places? Come on, you’re cleverer than that.”

Or at least Crowley thought Aziraphale was cleverer than that. Right now, he wasn’t looking particularly clever. He was looking rather more like he’d been smacked in the face with a halibut.

“Wait,” Aziraphale said, “wait here.”

And before Crowley could indicate whether he would or wouldn’t be waiting, Aziraphale was off like a jackrabbit, darting into the bookshelves.

Lacking anything better to do – or any clue of what was going on – Crowley waited.

It wasn’t long before Aziraphale was back, a leather-bound volume in his hands. Crowley (who had learned to read upside-down quite a long time ago) squinted at the cover. “Plato? What’s he got to do with all this?”

“Hush,” was all Aziraphale said. “Let’s see, I think it’s at the end of the end of the _Gorgias_ …”

For a minute there was no sound by the flipping of pages and the faint whisper of finger against paper as Aziraphale traced the lines.

“Ah-ha!” He beamed, turned the book around, and pointed to—something. “See? See there! Minos! Judge of the Underworld!”

“… You’ve lost me, angel.”

Aziraphale sighed. “Minos. Minotaur. Minos’s bull.”

Crowley raised an eyebrow and shook his head.

“Crowley, if Hera is right—or, well, not lying—the man I gave Ar—the baby to is Minos. Who is now,” and here Aziraphale grinned, “a judge of the Underworld.”

_Oooooooooh._ Oh, that _was_ clever. And certainly would be a hell of a lot easier than trying to figure out who was ruling over Crete when Aziraphale dropped the baby off.

Except Aziraphale’s face was falling. “But—but wait. How—how on earth would we be able to speak with him? Even if he _is_ in the Underworld, that’s—that’s still the Greek deities’ territory …”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that, angel.” Crowley laughed and leaned back, relaxing into the incredibly ugly (but incredibly comfortable) sofa. “Just leave that bit to me.”

Now it was Aziraphale’s turn to raise an eyebrow.

And it was Crowley’s turn to grin. “Little-known fact, y’see. About me. I’ve got friends on the other side.”

* * *

It was a lovely summer afternoon in London, one of Ariadne’s favorite cities in the world. And there were so many things she could be doing. Hitting the shops on Bond Street. Going with Dionysus to see a play at the reconstructed Globe. Meeting Persephone for afternoon tea at Kew Gardens. Or just walking in a park, enjoying the sunshine, and trying not to laugh at the Londoners who thought that 70 degrees Fahrenheit was warm enough to go shirtless.

But like an idiot, Ariadne wasn’t doing any of these things.

Instead she was holed up in her hotel room, laptop open, staring at a gods-damned _PowerPoint_.[5]

Or one particular slide of a PowerPoint.

Ariadne rested her chin on her hands and sighed.

She’d been alive for over thirty-eight hundred years. For the first century or so, she’d thought she was – not _mortal_ – but Olympian. Or close enough. No, none of her siblings had had anything like her powers, but she could have “won” the genetic lottery. They had all been a cross of Olympian/Titanic/Oceanic bloodlines; one of them had to turn out weird.

Except she wasn’t part of that cross. And though Athena had been able to discover what she wasn’t, she’d never troubled to find out what Ariadne _was_.

And now she had, not an answer, but at least a place to go and look for answers …

And Zeus had put his foot down and said she couldn’t even ask the questions.

_Well, fuck him._ [6]

As Ariadne saw it – or as she told herself she saw it – Zeus couldn’t have it both ways. He couldn’t say _you are not one of us_ and then expect her to blindly obey his every whim.

Hence the staring at the PowerPoint. She’d already tried Googling “rare book shops Soho London.” There had been over 30 million results. Ariadne had gotten through the first ten pages of them before realizing that if she was going to go searching for a needle in a haystack, she’d better find a magnet. Maybe there was something in the photos …

Her gaze went to the one with the car first. And it _was_ a very nice car. But now wasn’t the time to be distracted by automobilia – and more importantly, whoever or whatever had taken the photo hadn’t thought to choose an angle that included the license plate. She could just _imagine_ the results she’d get by Googling “black antique Bentley London.”

She was just about to close the PowerPoint when she saw something.

The car was parked in front of a corner shop.

The shop had a name.

The photo was small – too small to easily read – but maybe if she zoomed in—

The laptop screen darkened, then brightened, and Ariadne jumped.

“Dionysus,” she called over her shoulder, “are you—oh.”

Dionysus stood at the door that divided the sitting room from the anteroom that led to the hotel hallway. Dancing on his fingers was a small ball of spiky lightning.

“Just trying to get your attention,” he said with a small smile. “You’ve been staring at that thing all afternoon.”

Ariadne glared at the blue-white lightning ball. “If you fry my laptop …”

“You’ll just wave your hand and make it better again,” Dionysus said. Casually, he tossed the lightning ball to the side, where it zipped into the nearest wall socket.

Ariadne unplugged the laptop and closed it, just in case.

“Ari, relax. You know I don’t destroy electronics.”

“On purpose.”

Dionysus winced, remembering the lightbulbs, phonographs, and radios he’d exploded, shorted out, or set on fire before they realized that he was the reason why they couldn’t keep anything electronic working for more than a month.[7]

“Anyway,” he said, shuffling into the room and sitting on the sofa, not far from the desk chair Ariadne had commandeered, “what’s it going to take to get you to talk to me?”

Ariadne tucked a curl behind her ear and stared at the carpet.

“You haven’t been yourself since that lovely little family meeting,” Dionysus continued. “And not just in the ‘I had to deal with your family’ way. What’s wrong?”

She licked her lips and swallowed, trying to find some moisture, any moisture, for her suddenly Sahara-like mouth and throat.

Dionysus didn’t say anything. He simply sat there, in a little shaft of sunlight that came through the wide window, head tilted to the side and waiting. His hands were on his knees, palms up. And his eyes …

Normally Dionysus’s eyes were brown, simple, almost mortal-looking. Nothing like Apollo’s golden hazel eyes or Artemis’s silver gray eyes. Or even flashing-eyed Athena. Dionysus’s eyes came from his mother, Semele, who’d started life[8] as a mortal woman.

But other times … when the light hit them right … the color shifted, still dark, but the deep reddish purple of a rich burgundy or claret. And when Dionysus’s eyes looked like that …

_In vino veritas._

Ariadne looked away. She couldn’t share the truth with him. Not all of it. Best case scenario, Dionysus would try to talk her out of it or even try to stop her. Worst case scenario … he’d try to help her, and that would pull him right into the line of fire if (when) Zeus found out and got angry that he’d been disobeyed.

She wouldn’t do that.

But she had to tell him something to ease his mind, at least a little bit. Stop him from worrying about what she was doing, even if it meant worrying about what she was feeling.

So she sighed, and shrugged, and looked up. “Dionysus, we nearly had a nuclear holocaust on our hands.”

“It wouldn’t have affected us. Even if the bombs had hit LA dead center, we would have been fine.”

“No, we wouldn’t have.” Ariadne held up a finger to keep Dionysus from protesting. “Maybe not dead. But not _fine_. Not if our city, our _world_ went up in smoke in seconds.”

Dionysus looked away and shuddered.

“And there’s no way of knowing we wouldn’t have been dead.”

“Immortal,” Dionysus said, “means ‘can’t die.’”

“And maybe that’s true for you, but you’ve never survived a direct nuclear bomb blast. Neither has anyone you know. And …” Ariadne glanced at the desk, absently drawing patterns on it. “We don’t _know_ that I’m immortal.”

Dionysus had no answer for that. He never did, not all the times Ariadne brought it up. She’d survived everything that thirty-eight hundred years had thrown at her, but … well, Achilles might have still been knocking around, too, if Paris hadn’t shot a poisoned arrow right into his one weak spot.

Even if Ariadne didn’t know where her Achilles heel was, it didn’t necessarily follow that she didn’t have one.

“And … and I’m not ready to be done yet. I still have things I want to see. Do. Questions I want answered. And I think you do, too.”

Dionysus swallowed. Nodded. And looked up.

Maybe the light had shifted. Or maybe it was just Dionysus’s mood. But his eyes no longer held the secrets of a goblet of the best wine. Instead they were brown, mortal and vulnerable.

He smiled faintly and held out a hand. But he didn’t take hers. Even after all these years, he still waited for her to close the distance herself.

Ariadne put her hand in his, using it to leverage herself up, cross the short distance between them, stand between Dionysus’s knees and cup his cheek with her free hand.

Dionysus smiled up at her. “We’re here now. Alive. And not picking our way through a world of smoking rubble.”

“True.”

“We should take advantage of it.”

Ariadne chuckled. She shifted her hand slowly, letting her fingers tangle in his dark curls. Dionysus leaned into the touch. “And what did you have in mind?”

She’d laid out the bait for him, ripe for the taking, but take it was exactly what he didn’t do. Instead he brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them, slowly, one after the other.

“Whatever you want to do, sweetheart.”

* * *

[1] In either direction.

[2] Gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide or not, Aziraphale was not blind.

[3] A much more skillful sleight-of-hand than Aziraphale had ever managed.

[4] Which ought to have been anatomically impossible, but one never could tell with corporations.

[5] Hephaestus, being an extremely responsible soul, had sent them all the PowerPoint as soon as the family meeting was over.

[6] Though not literally.

[7] He wasn’t alone. All the children and grandchildren of Zeus had experienced a similar learning curve once electricity went from being “something that comes down from the sky when Zeus is annoyed” to “something actively pumped into every home, office building, and street corner on the planet.” Apparently being the descendent of the Thunder God came with a few more powers than were listed on the box.

[8] And ended it, but that was another story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
> Want to chat more? Come give me a shout-out on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/)!


	4. Underworld, Under Pressure

In some things, Aziraphale was very much a creature of convention. So when Crowley, after nearly an hour of furious texting, had told him that he had obtained conveyance to the Underworld, Aziraphale was not at all surprised to find that their ride (so to speak) would be leaving at midnight.

He was a bit more surprised to find that they would be heading to the Underworld via the London Underground.

He was _very_ surprised to find that they were to depart via Angel station, and vaguely wondered who was responsible for that.[1]

But here they were, at 11:45 PM (Aziraphale had insisted they arrive early, and Crowley hadn’t argued), standing idly on the southbound platform, waiting for their train to arrive. At this hour on a weeknight, the station was practically deserted. The closest person to them was a blond, dark-skinned young woman seated on a bench, dressed in the most incongruous combination of flower-printed sundress and heavy combat boots. She had a handbag on her lap, and from the handbag poked the head of a small and yappy dog.

Crowley had given the dog (and perforce the young lady) a wide berth from the beginning, and Aziraphale was only too happy to follow suit. He loved all of God’s creatures, he really did, but _love_ was not the same as _like_ , and when it came to small, yappy dogs, that distinction was important.

When Crowley checked his expensive diver’s watch for the tenth time, Aziraphale thought it was past time to make conversation.

“You never said,” he remarked quietly, “how exactly you made these … friends on the other side.”

Crowley looked up. Even with the sunglasses, Aziraphale could see the faint flash of trepidation.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t like,” Aziraphale went on. “I mean, it’s not that important. I was just—”

“Nah, nah.” Crowley made a vague gesture. “S’all right. I don’t mind.”

He didn’t say anything else for a long moment, choosing instead to roll his shoulders and shove his hands (or really his fingers) in his pockets. Aziraphale held his peace as well.

Just as Aziraphale was about to break and inform Crowley, again, that he really didn’t have to talk about this if he didn’t want to, Crowley started to speak.

“All right, first of all, you have to understand – it was the fourteenth century.”

“Oh _no_.”

“Right. And the _Inferno_ had just come out.”

Aziraphale began to nod – and then he blinked and did a double-take. “You read the _Inferno_?”

“Of course. I had to do it before Hell did.”

“But you don’t read!”

Crowley winced. “Well—you know—s’an exception to every rule, right? And like I said, I had to know what was in there before Hell caught wind of it. So I could figure out whether to take credit or deny responsibility.”

Then Crowley shuddered. It was a full-body thing, starting at the crown of his head and extending all the way down to his snakeskin shoes. “Inventive fellow, that Alighieri. Bloody good thing Beelzebub’s Tuscan was shit, otherwise the souls Down Below would have had an even _more_ interesting time of it … anyway. The point is, I read the thing. And then I, er, borrowed a couple of your older books, because a lot of it was … familiar, and not in a ‘oh, this man’s describing Downstairs’ sort of way.”

In all of that, Aziraphale judged it prudent to restrain himself to a nod, so he did.

“And then I realized – well, hold on, the reason this is so familiar is that Alighieri was cribbing half of it from the Greeks. And the Romans. I mean, really, you’d find a lot of nasty things Downstairs, but Medusa isn’t one of them. And then I thought …”

Crowley paused. “I mentioned this was the fourteenth century, right?”

“You did.”

“Right. Well, keep that in mind. It was the fourteenth century, and I was _desperate_ to get out of town for a bit.”

Aziraphale couldn’t quite help his raised eyebrow.

“So I went to, er, people Downstairs, and I said, ‘Look, the humans already think that all the Greek lot in the Underworld are with us. And we know that the Underworld lot didn’t always get along with the rest of the Greek lot. So, why not see if they might not want to make things official?’”

Aziraphale blinked rapidly. “You—you proposed forming an alliance with the Greek Underworld deities?”

“Fourteenth. Century,” Crowley replied, as if that explained everything.[2]

“And your Head Office … took you up on it?”

Crowley pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed the space above his eyebrows. “It was a very bad century for everyone, angel.”

_Clearly_ , thought Aziraphale, even if he didn’t say it.

“Anyway. Head Office thought that sounded like a _grand_ idea, and after some diplomatic back-and-forth, we were invited to send a delegation down. Er. Over, really. I didn’t lead it, I made damn sure of that, but … well, I was on it. Being that the whole thing was my idea and all.”

“Which was what you wanted, more or less. To get away.”

Crowley clicked his tongue and pointed at Aziraphale. “Right you are. So, we go down there and … look, I won’t bore you with the diplomatic details, but the whole thing ended with Hades telling us to go to Hell.”

“When you say ‘go to Hell’ …”

“Those were his literal words; however, I think the meaning was closer to ‘get off my lawn.’”

“Ah.”

“Quite. So that was that. But it wasn’t a total loss. I spent a fair amount of time skiving off, so I made a couple, er, acquaintances.”

“Your ‘friends on the other side.’”

“Indeed.” He smirked. “It was almost worth being blamed for the whole debacle.”

Aziraphale looked at him sharply. “When—when you say blamed …”

Crowley shot him a _look_ that managed to ask, despite the sunglasses, if Aziraphale was really as thick as all that. “Well, _somebody_ had to take the blame for it – and it wasn’t going to be Hastur or Ligur, Dukes of Hell and all that.”

And then he shrugged. Like it was nothing.

And maybe, to Crowley, it was nothing. It had all been a long time ago. Crowley tended – or pretended – to let Hell’s bad graces slide off him like water off a duck’s back. Perhaps, with those thoughts in mind, it should have been nothing to Aziraphale, too.

It wasn’t.

He reached for Crowley’s hand, took it in his and lightly rubbed his thumb over the knuckles. “Whatever they did to you,” he said, softly enough that it would have taken a miracle for any being other than Crowley to hear it, “you didn’t deserve it.”

Crowley’s jaw fell. His gaze darted between their linked hands and Aziraphale’s face. He even briefly flicked his sunglasses up.

Aziraphale only smiled and gave Crowley’s hand a squeeze.

Crowley smiled back, and Aziraphale thought he saw a flush darkening his cheeks. But he couldn’t be sure – Crowley looked away too quickly.

He didn’t let go of his hand, though, and that was more than enough for Aziraphale.

They were still holding hands when their train pulled up. And Aziraphale knew it was _their_ train. Most of the vehicles of the London Underground weren’t jet-black, lit by blue-flamed lanterns, and only one car long besides.

As soon as the train huffed to a halt (surrounded, it should be noted, by blue-tinged smoke), the sliding doors opened. And out stepped …

Aziraphale’s eyes saw a young man, tall and thin, with hunched shoulders and his hands in his pockets. His hair was tousled, as if he’d just gotten out of bed. And he was yawning.

Aziraphale’s _other_ senses reported that while the being might be male-shaped and comfortable with that gender designation, he was most emphatically not young and not, strictly speaking, a man.

“Hypnos!” Crowley said. He let go of Aziraphale’s hand so he could fling his arms out. “Long time, no see! So glad you could give me a hand with this.”

“Crowley,” said the being – Hypnos.

“Anyway, this is my, uh—my—”

“Angel,” Aziraphale said smoothly. He stuck out his hand. “Aziraphale, Principality and Angel of the Eastern Gate, at your service.”

Hypnos didn’t take the proffered hand. He barely looked at Aziraphale. Barely looked at Crowley, either.

“Look,” he said, plunging his hands even more deeply into his pockets, “let me just—I’m sorry, all right?”

“Sorry?” Aziraphale asked, perhaps foolishly.

“Angel,” Crowley said – and his tone was tight, wound and tense like a coiled spring ready to burst free. It was the sort of tone one took if one’s next word was going to be _run_.

“I just—I didn’t really have a choice, ok?” Hypnos said. “But I am sorry.”

And before Aziraphale could think or react – before even Crowley could react – Hypnos looked over his shoulder. “Briareus? You can come out now.”

And then—

And then—

And _then_ —

Aziraphale’s eyes went wide and his other senses skittered and he didn’t even need the arm Crowley flung in front of him to prod him back.

Briareus came out.

The – being – shouldn’t have fit in the train. Or the station. Or the city, probably. But there he was. Dozens of heads, more heads than Aziraphale wanted to count, and probably twice as many hands as that, monstrous and _huge_ —

And smiling. On every head. “Hello,” the being said, from every single mouth. It echoed throughout the station.

“Angel,” Crowley said again, in that same tense, coiled-up tone. Aziraphale grabbed Crowley’s wrist, because if he was going to make a break for it, he sure as Hell wasn’t doing it alone—

“I wouldn’t try running if I were you.”

Aziraphale’s other senses were pinging again, announcing the – arrival? – of another not-human being, except—when he turned to see the source of the voice …

The only other creature in the station was the girl who’d been sitting on the bench. And her dog.

She was getting up, now. Smiling. And opening her handbag enough so the dog could leap out. And as it did, it—

—changed.

What had been a tiny, fuzzy, yappy dog of indeterminate breed was a huge spotted mastiff with close-cropped fur.

And three heads.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale heartily agreed.

“Hello!” said the girl in the flower dress. “I’m Persephone. And you’ll be coming with us.”

The dog growled in triplicate.

“Y’know, Hypnos,” Crowley said, “if taking us in the back way was going to get you in trouble with your bosses, you could have just said no.”

“He could have, but then you’d just try to sneak in a different way, when we weren’t expecting you, and then where would we be?” Persephone stepped forward, the dog keeping pace with her. “Now, Briareus, if you would—”

“Now—now, wait just a moment!” Aziraphale said, before Briareus could (he assumed) pick the two of them up like a pair of toy soldiers and toss them into the car – or worse.

He went to make a placating gesture with both hands, realized he’d never let go of Crowley’s wrist, and settled for making it with just one hand. “I’m sure—I’m sure we’re all reasonable beings here. And that we can come to—to an understanding.”

Crowley groaned. “ _Angel_ …”

“Ignore him, he’s just being dramatic,” Aziraphale said. “The thing is—the thing is …” _Yes, Aziraphale, what_ is _the thing?_

Their interlocutors didn’t seem inclined to save Aziraphale from himself. Persephone had one hand on her hip and was surveying him with a bemused smile and a cocked head. Hypnos had one eyebrow raised, and Briareus had managed to put an inviting, curious expression on each of his faces. Even the dog wasn’t helping – one head was still glaring at them, lips pulled back in a snarl, while the next had was tilted to the side, and the last was looking up at Persephone.

Aziraphale gulped and said, “Whatever it is you think we’re trying to do – I can virtually guarantee that we’re not trying to do that.”

“Oh, I think you’d be surprised by our imaginations,” Persephone replied. “But we can talk on the train. Shall we?”

“Wait!” Aziraphale wasn’t sure who he said that to – the goddess before him, or Crowley beside him, who was tensing in every muscle. “For—for some reason,” and _now_ his mind was finally beginning to work, _now_ he could think of something to say, “you seem very—determined to get us on that train. I mean …” He glanced over his shoulder at Briareus, who grinned and waved with half his hands.

“Well, like I said – if you come to the Underworld, we want it to be on our terms,” Persephone said.

“Yes, yes. Of course. Very—er—reasonable. Now, that being _said_ , it occurs to me that we could do this the easy way … or the hard way.”

“And by ‘hard way,’” Crowley said, pulling his shades down just enough to glare at Persephone over them, “the angel means hard way _for you_.”

That was not in fact what Aziraphale meant, or at least not with quite in tone of menace, but he was just enough of a bastard to realize how convenient it would be if Persephone thought that was what he meant, so he didn’t correct Crowley.

Despite this, Persephone looked unconvinced.

“But we are quite willing—or at least willing enough—to go with you the easy way, provided we get some … assurances.”

“Assurances?” Persephone repeated.

“ _Asssurancesss_?” Crowley hissed.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, not daring to take his eyes away from Persephone. “Specifically, if we go into the Underworld with you the easy way, that we will be allowed to leave it on our own terms. And by ‘our own terms,’ I mean that you will return us to Earth – and not just Earth, but this particular Underground station—on the _platform_ , mind, not on the tracks or in the gears of the escalator or anyplace inconvenient like that—when we say we wish to return to Earth. And you have to return us to the platform _now_ , not a hundred years before it was dug or after it’s been reduced to rubble or—”

Persephone blinked. “I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to. Nobody of Olympus could.”

“… Oh,” Aziraphale murmured.

“So is that it?” Persephone asked, looking between the two of them. “Or do you have more things you want?”

“I—er,” Aziraphale said. He looked at Crowley.

Crowley was looking back at him, one eyebrow raised over the sunglasses, as if to say, _This is your show, angel._

“I … think that should be enough to be getting on with, yes,” Aziraphale said. Perhaps, in an ideal world, he’d throw in a few more clauses and conditions – a whole contract of them – but they hadn’t the time, and he wasn’t certain anyone on the platform had the patience. “But only if you swear it by the Styx.”

Behind him, Aziraphale thought he heard a whole crowd of people gasping – which meant that Briareus must have been quite surprised indeed.

The dog’s hackles rose. Persephone slowly blinked.

“The Styx,” she repeated.

“Or we could always do this the hard way,” Crowley said, shrugging as if it made no difference to him.

“ _Crowley_ ,” Hypnos said, and to Aziraphale, it almost sounded like he was pleading.

“Hmm,” Persephone murmured. “You do realize the kind of trouble a goddess could get in, swearing by the Styx, yes? You’ve heard of my brother Dionysus? And his mother?”

“I—have,” Aziraphale admitted.

“So if I’m going to do that …” Persephone tapped one finger against her lips. “I’d have some conditions of my own.”

“Y-yes?” Aziraphale asked.

“Mainly that you two get on that train car peacefully, and,” and now her voice grew hard, implacable, a force to be reckoned with, “that you two _behave_ while you are in my realm.”

Aziraphale looked at Crowley. Crowley looked at Aziraphale.

“Define—” Crowley started.

Aziraphale couldn’t let him finish. “Will we at least get a warning if we aren’t behaving?”

A small smile poked at the corner of Persephone’s lips. “That seems fair enough. So. Are we in accord?”

Once again, Aziraphale and Crowley exchanged glances. This time, Crowley nodded.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said.

“Then …” Persephone closed her eyes, shook out her shoulders, and took a deep breath. The dog whined and pressed close to her leg.

When she opened her eyes, they were glowing.

“I swear by the Styx,” she said, “that as long as you come with us peacefully and behave yourselves while in the Underworld, conforming yourself to our standards after being given due warning, I will personally ensure that you are permitted to leave when you ask to leave and are brought back here, to the mortal plane, to this train station, to this platform, without any meddling in the streams of Time.”

There was a faint _whoosh_ of power through the station, a sense of binding. It circled Persephone, ruffling her hair and playing with her skirt.

It faded. And so did the glow in Persephone’s eyes. “Satisfied?”

“I … think so,” Aziraphale said, glancing sidelong at Crowley.

Crowley plunged his free hand into his pocket as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “Yeah. Yeah, sssure.”

The hiss was rather a giveaway. Aziraphale loosened his grip on Crowley’s wrist to take his hand again.

“Then shall we? I’m sure you’ll have things you’ll be wanting to get back to.” Persephone shot them a sunny smile, and not waiting for their assent, walked around them and toward the train.

Aziraphale looked again at Crowley. “Shall we get a wiggle on?”

Crowley closed his eyes and groaned. “Only if you promise never to use those words in my hearing again.”

“Aww.” Once again, the ground shook as all of Briareus’s heads spoke at once. “I kind of like it. Get a wiggle on. Sounds fun!”

Crowley turned around, Aziraphale turning with him. He looked from Briareus, to Aziraphale, to the floor. And under his breath, he murmured something that sounded like, “Sa—Go— _Someone_ give me strength.”

And with that, into the train car they went.

* * *

Of the things that Samael strongly disliked about heaven, these three remained: hoverboards, interns, and meetings. But the greatest of these was meetings.

Unfortunately, after the failed Apocalypse, Samael’s quota of meetings had gone up exponentially.

There was so much to cover: standing down the troops, un-provisioning the supplies, figuring out just what in Heaven’s name had happened to War, Famine, and Pollution. And of course dealing with the strongly worded letters coming from the other divine forces of the world. Some of them were polite, some of them weren’t, and all of them had the same overarching theme: _What in SOMEONE’S name did you think you were playing at?_

Not for the first time, Samael allowed herself to drift away, fantasizing about what she’d do to the traitor-angel, traitor-demon, and little-snot-Antichrist were she ever to get her hands on them. Or maybe she’d just rain down fire and brimstone on the entirety of England, Sodom and Gomorrah style. It could hardly make things _worse_ , could it?

“—and Ra, Isis, and Osiris want to come up and have a, I quote, ‘talk,’” Gabriel said, tossing the latest missive onto the glass-topped table and jolting Samael from her reverie. “When’s the last time they wanted a _talk_?”

“They were a bit upset after the plagues,” Michael pointed out.

“Well, if they would have just talked some _sense_ into Pharaoh—”

A chime of the wards cut off what promised to be a supremely indignant (and annoying) rant, and Samael was forced to be grateful.

She seemed to be the only one at the table feeling that way. Uriel scowled, Michael frowned, and Sandalphon sighed. It was left to Gabriel to sigh and say, “Come in.”

The wards were released, and toward them came—

Samael bit back a groan.

An intern.

On a _hoverboard_.

“Um,” she squeaked (at least, the intern’s form was vaguely feminine; Samael had no idea how the intern actually identified, but “she” would do for now), “um, excuse me, your—your archangel-nesses, but, er, there’s a bit of a—a situation.”

Gabriel looked about ready to snap; Michael ended that with a look. “Yes, dear? What is it?” she asked with a voice full of enough treacly, Julie-Andrews-inspired sweetness to make Samael want to vomit.[3]

“It’s the traitor, ma’am,” the intern said.

Everyone at the table sat up straighter. The intern squeaked again.

“What about him?” asked Michael in that same treacly tone – albeit this time seasoned with just a pinch of salt.

“He’s disappeared. Gone off the grid! Here!” The intern hovered over, practically threw the printout in her hands at Michael, and just as quickly hovered away.

“… What?” asked Sandalphon, who was always a little slow on the uptake.

Michael was already smoothing the printout and scrutinizing it. “His last known location was Angel Underground Station, London.”

“Angel?” Uriel repeated. “That’s a liminal.”

If Samael weren’t an angel – and not just an angel, but an archangel in a room with other archangels – she would have sworn. Liminals – liminal points, technically – were places where _any_ being of _any_ stripe could enter other planes, even planes where they had no business being. Depending on what train he caught, the traitor could have been on his way to Valhalla, Duat, Tír na nÓg, or any other plane.[4]

And to make matters worse, they wouldn’t have any means of tracking him until he came back. Not without causing several diplomatic incidents and making themselves even more enemies among the neighbors.

“Does that say anything about the _other_ traitor?” Gabriel asked.

Michael tutted. “We can’t track him, you know that …” She raised her eyebrows at Gabriel. “Back channels?”

“We really need to make them front—” Gabriel started.

He didn’t have a chance to finish.

A raucous human male voice had started to sing.

“ _Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name! But what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game …_ ”

The sound was coming from Michael’s pocket.

She flushed. “Excuse me. I really must take this.” She pulled her cel-phone[5] from her pocket and pressed it to her ear. “Yes?”

The entire room leaned forward, waiting with bated breath.

“Yours too? Where was he last spotted?”

“…”

“Yes, that’s where ours was.”

“…”

“The inference is rather obvious. It’s certainly too much to be coincidence.”

“…”

“I’m really not sure—”

“Michael—Michael!” Gabriel said, waving frantically and gesturing for Michael to put the phone down, like a human child trying to get his mother’s attention.

Michael glared at him rather like an exasperated human mother would, sighed and spoke into the phone again. “Please excuse me for a moment, I’m in the middle of a meeting—no, no, stay on the line, this won’t take a moment.” She brought the phone down and covered the microphone with one hand. “ _What_?”

“It’s the demon, isn’t it? He’s with Aziraphale!” Gabriel said.

Michael sighed. “He’s also gone off-grid – last seen at Angel station.”

“Right. I knew it!” Gabriel beamed, and Samael tried not to roll her eyes. Based on the way Michael’s mouth twisted, she wasn’t the only one. “Great. Tell your, uh, contact that we want a meeting.”

“What?” asked Michael.

“What?” echoed Uriel.

“Huh?” grunted Sandalphon.

_No, no, no, no!_

“If _our_ man and _their_ man are going off the grid? We need a coordinated response. None of this back channels nonsense. We need a meeting. You, me—”

“And me,” Samael jumped in.

Gabriel and Michael both blinked at her.

“What?” she asked. “You think I’m going to let the two of you meet with literal demons without my sword?” She shifted in her chair, like she was trying to scratch an itchy spot between her wings. “Our interests and Hell’s might coincide, _for now_ , but they are not to be trusted.”

“I second Samael,” Uriel said. “You’ll need backup.”

Gabriel huffed. “Fine, Samael too – but no more! Too many people in the room and it just becomes chaos. Michael, you got all that? You, me, Samael, and your contact, Beelzebub, and—and whoever else Beelzebub wants to bring.”

Michael’s eyes had narrowed, but after a moment, she nodded. She brought the cel-phone back to her ear. “Hastur? Are you still there? … Good. Yes. I’d like to propose a meeting.”

They could all hear the squawk of surprise on the other end.

“Yes, I know, highly irregular … however, I don’t think we have much choice.” Michael sighed. “As the Archangel Gabriel just said … this calls for a coordinated response.”

* * *

It had been nearly seven hundred years since Crowley had seen Hades, but the god and his realm had barely changed at all.

Take, for instance, the throne room. First, it was, in fact, a throne room and not a conference room or a plush executive office. Second, it looked like it had been decorated in sometime BC and not altered one bit since. It was the sort of room that made its statement in grand columns, marble floors, jewel-encrusted mosaics, and not much else.

Except for the thrones. One iron, plain and austere. The other silver, set with jewels worked into flowers and climbing vines. All the same as when Crowley had been here last.

Today there were two people sitting on the thrones. The Hellish delegation had gone to the Underworld during the summer last time, so Persephone hadn’t been part of the negotiations.[6] She’d taken her place on the silver throne now. And Hades …

When Crowley had met him the first time, Hades had been black-haired, dark-eyed, clean-shaven, deathly serious, and surprisingly youthful. The only hint of modernity in his appearance had been his clothing. It was much the same now, only instead of a tunic and hosen, Hades was wearing a well-tailored suit.

He also didn’t look happy, which was no change from last time.

“So,” he said without preamble as soon as Persephone had seated herself. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”

If there had been any more sarcasm dripping off the “pleasure,” someone would have had to put up a “wet floor” sign.

Aziraphale answered him. It was probably better for everyone that way. “Your Majesty,” he began. “First, I would like to thank you for extending your hospitality to …”

Hades’s slowly arching eyebrow killed that speech. Aziraphale seemed to deflate.

_Can’t be having that._ Crowley bumped his elbow into Aziraphale’s. When Aziraphale glanced at him, confused, Crowley took his opening to grab the angel’s hand and thread his fingers through it.

Then he turned back to the thrones, fake smile plastered on for plausible deniability, but feet planted shoulder-width apart, free hand shoved into a pocket, and every inch of his corporation radiating, _Make something of it, I fucking dare you._

Neither of the beings on the thrones took him up on that dare. Neither of them even raised an eyebrow.

“You were saying?” Hades asked Aziraphale.

Aziraphale took a deep breath. “We would like to request an audience with Minos of Crete.”

“The judge?” Hades asked, words dangerously clipped. He glanced sidelong at Persephone, but Persephone’s eyebrows were up, and she almost looked surprised. “Why?”

“Er, not in that capacity,” Aziraphale replied. “That is – really, we’re not at all concerned with the workings of your realm, or the judging or the—well, any of that, really. It’s just …” Aziraphale took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and hung onto Crowley’s hand tight enough to cut off the circulation. “We may have—mislaid something on Crete while he ruled it, and we’re hoping he can help us find it.”

Now Hades’s expression was a mirror of his wife’s. “You think you mislaid something on Crete.”

“Y-yes.”

“When Minos ruled it.”

“We believe so.”

“ _Thirty-eight hundred years ago_.”

Crowley felt the jolt that ran through Aziraphale and hoped his hand grounded him enough to keep the pair on the thrones from noticing it. As for what Crowley felt …

Well, assuming they made it out of the Underworld in one piece, he could at least say the trip hadn’t been a total loss.

Meanwhile, Aziraphale had managed to let out an unsteady chuckle. “My goodness, has it been that long?”

“And you’re just looking for it now?” Hades asked.

“Well, we had a free moment,” Aziraphale replied with a sunny, shaky smile that, Crowley was certain, fooled no one. Maybe he should start doing the talking …

Hades opened his mouth.

He didn’t get a chance to say anything. Persephone did it for him. “Would the timing have anything to do with …”

She trailed off.

Her eyes narrowed.

Slowly, her head tilted, bird-like, to one side.

Crowley looked sidelong at Aziraphale, only to find Aziraphale looking sidelong at him.

Hades, meanwhile, watched his wife with an expression of no small confusion.

“Your wings,” Persephone said finally.

“What?” asked Aziraphale, just as Crowley said, “Our _what_?”

“Your wings. Show them to us.” She leaned back and folded her hands on her lap, expectant.

Crowley glanced at Aziraphale, who gaped back at him. “Why?” asked Crowley.

Hades looked like he’d like to ask the same thing.

“Because …” Persephone bit her lip for a fraction of a second, just long enough for Crowley to mark it, before sitting up straight and fixing them with the sort of royal glare that takes millennia to perfect, but once perfected, takes no prisoners.

“Because I want to help you, if I can,” she said (which seemed to be news to her husband), “but you shouldn’t need me to tell you that you have powerful enemies, enemies that I risk turning into my enemies if I help you. If I am going to take that risk, I need to know that I am taking it for a—a good reason, and for that, I need to see your wings.”

“But,” Aziraphale said, “but we’re not trying—it’s not our intention to—and we certainly wouldn’t—”

“It’s not your intentions I’m questioning. It’s …” She waved a hand vaguely. “As I said: you have enemies. Enemies whose actions you can’t control. You are asking a great favor of me, of _us_ right now. I am merely asking for a small amount of trust in return.”

“And if we say no …” Crowley asked.

Persephone shrugged. “Then I don’t see a point in continuing this conversation.”

Once again, Crowley and Aziraphale exchanged glances. Crowley was trying to think of some way, any way, bringing their wings out on this plane would lead to discorporation or worse. Aziraphale …

The question in his blue eyes was clear. _What choice do we have?_

Crowley sighed. Squeezed the angel’s hand, asking, _Wait._ Then he rolled his shoulders …

… And unfurled his wings.

“Happy?” he asked, gaze fixed on Persephone.

She didn’t answer, although something made her nostrils flare. Crowley wondered what it was. His wings? He brought them forward enough to see, but they looked much the same as always – black, big, vaguely swan-like, impeccably groomed.

She turned to Aziraphale. “And you?”

Aziraphale took his own deep breath, stretched his neck, and let his wings loose.

Even here, even now, something in Crowley lurched when he saw them. Pristine white, pure, radiant – only, did the angel _ever_ preen? Assuming they got out of here in one piece, Crowley was going to have to sit Aziraphale down and do the job himself. Some of that dust was probably centuries old.

“I see,” Persephone said, dashing that rather agreeable mental image. She bit her lip again, and she folded her hands under her chin.

Hades, however, was staring at her with an expression that could most charitably be called, _What??_

Persephone finally seemed to notice. “Wait,” she said to Crowley and Aziraphale, and she snapped her fingers. A heavy velvet stage curtain fell in front of the dais, blocking Hades and Persephone from view. And hearing as well. Crowley checked.

“Well,” Aziraphale murmured, “that—”

“Shhh,” Crowley replied. “If they don’t have this place bugged to the gills, they’re a lot stupider than they look.”

Aziraphale’s brows knit together.

“Listening devices, angel.”

“Oh!” He nodded.

They stood in silence for a few heartbeats, which was boring, but Crowley would take boring.

“Do …” Aziraphale paused, as if questioning whether it was really safe to say what he was thinking. “Do you think we might be able to put our wings away?”

“I …” Crowley hesitated, turning the question over in his mind, examining it from all angles, looking for a trap. He didn’t find one. “I don’t see why not.”

All the same, he brought his wings back in first – and it was only when no Furies came flying from the ceiling, no trapdoor opened up beneath him, and no magic arrows came zooming from the wall that he nodded for Aziraphale to follow suit.

And again, they waited. In silence. Deathly dull silence.

Until the curtain opened.

“Right,” Persephone said without preamble. Hades, next to her, looked equal parts suspicious and thoughtful. “Upon further consideration, we have decided that you will not be permitted to speak to the judge Minos.”

Aziraphale’s jaw fell, and Crowley hissed in a breath like he’d weathered a punch to the gut. “But—” Aziraphale began.

Persephone held up a hand. “Wait. We would not let the representatives of _any_ divinity speak to one of our subjects. The dead must be given their rest; the time for proselytizing is long past. That being said …”

Persephone adjusted her skirt. “You said yourself you wished to ask to him about something that happened while he lived. If he knows anything about what you seek, it will be in his life scroll. And my husband and I,” she nodded to Hades, “have decided to give you access to our archives.”

“When—when you say our archives …” Aziraphale said slowly, wetting his lips in anticipation.

“They contain the life scrolls of every mortal soul in our realm,” Hades said. “You may look in Minos’s or … any other mortal alive on Crete during the time period you mislaid your—thing. Minos’s steward, his housekeeper …”

“The nursemaid for his children,” Persephone added helpfully.

Something about her tone made Crowley look _very_ hard at her, but Aziraphale seemed to notice nothing. “Oh!” he said. “Oh, that sounds—that sounds delightful! Crowley?”

Once again, Crowley examined the offer for traps. Once again, he didn’t find any. Once again, he had to wonder what choice they really had.

He nodded, slowly. “Thank you. We’ll take you up on that.”

* * *

Even after they were led to the archives and left there – alone, as far as Crowley could tell – he still mentally poked the offer for traps.

Aziraphale, though. Aziraphale’s eyes were shining as they took on the rows upon rows of honeycombed shelves, each housing a scroll marked with a small tag. With the slightest breeze, the tags would all flutter like butterflies.

Crowley couldn’t help watching him, just the littlest bit. The last time that Crowley had seen the angel this excited, they’d been in the Library of Alexandria.[7]

“Right,” Aziraphale said, rubbing his hands together. “Right. Let’s see … there’s got to be a … a card catalogue or something around here somewhere …”

“Angel,” said Crowley, surveying the shelves before him, realizing how they stretched invisible into the ceiling and unfurled for miles past the horizon, “you realize we could be looking through these things for centuries, right?”

“Hence the card catalogue, dear boy, I certainly don’t intend to go plucking scrolls off the shelf at random … now, let’s see …”

The bubble of foreboding slowly inflated in Crowley’s gut. This—this was the trap, wasn’t it? They could leave whenever they wanted, except, if they were still searching for answers, they wouldn’t _want to_ …

“Well,” Crowley murmured as Aziraphale headed down one of the corridors of shelves, “now I know how Oedipus felt.”

Aziraphale paused and raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

“I said, now I know how Oedipus felt.

“ _Oedipus_?”

“Well—yeah? I mean, the god of the dead offers to give him exactly what he wants, except there’s a catch, y’see, and it _seems_ simple, except …”

Aziraphale blinked, slowly, and did not seem less confused. “Oh, come on,” Crowley said, “you have to remember this one. Musician bloke, his wife dies, so he goes down to the Underworld to fetch her back, and—”

“ _Oh_.” Aziraphale slowly nodded. “You mean _Orpheus_.”

“Orpheus, Oedipus – what’s the difference?”

Aziraphale shot him a glance that managed to be equal parts fond and exasperated. “Quite a big one, but I’ll explain later. Come on, help me find a card catalogue.”

“Pretty sure this place doesn’t use the Dewey Decimal System,” Crowley muttered, but he followed the angel anyway.

He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for. He probably wouldn’t be able to find a card catalogue in a modern library. (That was what librarians were for.) In the archives of the god of the dead … it was a lost cause. So he contented himself with looking up at the shelves, wondering if he ought to start reading labels to see if he could get some kind of idea—

That was probably why he didn’t notice the desk until after he’d barked his shin on it.

“Ow!”

“You all right?” Aziraphale asked, turning around.

“I—” Crowley frowned, eyes narrowed, and stared at the desk. Or rather, what was on the desk.

A computer. Old – he hadn’t seen a screen like that in years – but …

“You keep going, angel,” Crowley said. “I’ll … let me check this out.”

Aziraphale frowned. “If you want to look at this … don’t go too far. I don’t want either of us getting lost in here.”

Yes, that could very well be another trap, couldn’t it? Crowley nodded. “I’ll stay here. And I’ll holler if I need you.”[8]

Aziraphale nodded once, then, with a worried backward glance, disappeared down the next row of shelves.

Crowley sat down. The computer setup looked familiar enough – screen, mouse, keyboard (but why blank? Or had it been used so much that all the letters had worn away?), tower to the right of the screen. He jiggled the mouse (one of the rolly-ball mice?), and the computer woke up.

He blinked and pulled his sunglasses down to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. Was that Windows XP?

Perhaps the archives of the dead using a modern operating system was too much to expect …

Crowley squinted at the screen. What he was seeing wasn’t a login screen or even a generic desktop. Instead, he was greeted by a simple menu showing flags. Lots of flags.

There were all the familiar ones, of course – English, French, Spanish, German, etc. – as well as a few less-than-familiar ones. And ones that weren’t flags at all. Like the Roman eagle and the Athenian owl.

_Interesting …_

Out of habit, he clicked on the Union Jack.

The flag-menu disappeared, replaced by a search page. An incredibly _detailed_ search page. There were fields for first name, last name, place of birth, place of death, birth year, death year, father’s name, mother’s name … his eyes were starting to glaze over and he hadn’t even tried scrolling.

At the top was a simple logo, looking like letters carved in stone, and it read _Necropedia._

Crowley blinked. _It can’t possibly be this simple._

But if it was … only one way to find out.

Crowley clicked on the “First Name” search field, glanced at the keyboard out of habit—and jumped. Before him was a familiar QWERTY keyboard.

Well. Probably a good thing he’d chosen English as his language of choice. He could barely even remember the Greek alphabet, never mind touch-type in it.

So he typed. Put “Minos” in the “First Name” field, “Crete” for the place of birth. And hit “search.”

The familiar hourglass icon popped up. Crowley watched the pixel sands make their way to the bottom and the hourglass turn over.

It happened again.

And again.

And again.

_Well, good thing I can’t die of old age._

Crowley glanced at his watch.

The hourglass continued to turn.

Fifteen minutes later, it occurred to Crowley that he perhaps he ought to have narrowed down the search. There were probably quite a few Minoses who’d been born on Crete.

Ten minutes after that – about the time Crowley was debating finding out if control-alt-delete worked on Underworld computers – the hourglass finally disappeared, replaced by a page of search results.

Many, many search results. And – if Crowley was reading this right – yes, they _were_ ordered newest to oldest.

Well, that wouldn’t work. Crowley found the menu to change search order, clicked on “oldest to newest,” and braced himself for another half-hour wait.

It didn’t come. The results reordered themselves almost immediately. Crowley clicked on the first one.

_Born 1872 B.C.E. to Europa, daughter of Agenor of Tyre, and Zeus, son of Kronos …_

The names “Europa” and “Agenor” were both linked, while “Zeus” and “Kronos” weren’t. What was it that Hades had said – something about the archives covering every mortal soul here? Zeus and Kronos certainly weren’t mortal …

But the only way to find out more was to keep reading, so he did.

By the time Crowley got to Minos’s fifth birthday, he realized that this was going to take forever. He could scroll and skim, or …

He glanced at the keyboard and hit control-F in a spirit of experimentation.

Another search box popped up.

Crowley typed in “Ariadne.”

Words flew past …

Finally, the text stopped on the first yellow-highlighted “Ariadne.”

_… Minos and Pasiphaë named the girl Ariadne and the monster Pasiphaë had delivered Asterion, though he would later be called the Minotaur …_

“Pasiphaë” was linked. “Ariadne,” “Asterion,” and “Minotaur” weren’t. Interesting. Crowley scrolled up for more context.

_On the day Pasiphaë’s pains came upon her, Minos shut himself in his closet as was his custom, to busy himself with work until the travail was over. Yet though he ordered that he was not to be disturbed, a flaxen-haired stranger from the east came in. Locks he passed through like smoke, and though he was visible to mortal eyes, he walked unseen._

_When he came unto the king, before Minos could challenge him, the stranger worked magic that left Minos in a waking sleep, unable to act or move of his own accord, but able to listen and speak._

_The stranger was carrying a babe, which he pressed into Minos’s arms. “She’s yours now,” the stranger said, and though his words were not true, the force of his magic made Minos believe them. “Your daughter. You’ll believe your wife just gave birth to her, and you’re just, er, minding the first one while she works on the other one. Right, that’ll work—anyway. She’s your daughter now, and—and you have to take care of her. Treat her like your own. Call her the twin of the other baby. And—and please, for the love of everything good and holy, love her. If you do nothing else_

Crowley couldn’t keep reading. He closed his eyes, breathed in sharply—

And pushed all of it—everything, every jagged-glass feeling that threatened to burst through—down. And down. And down.

He didn’t have time for this. He had to keep reading.

_love her.” The stranger left then._

_Soon the servants came to tell Minos that Pasiphaë had been delivered safely, but the babe was monstrous, half-bull, half-man. Minos and Pasiphaë named the girl Ariadne …_

Crowley leaned back. He’d read enough. Now he just had to find the angel—

“Crowley— _Crowley_!”

Crowley barely had time to bolt upright before Aziraphale rounded the corner, out of breath and carrying a scroll.

“Oh, thank Heaven, you haven’t moved—Crowley! I found it! I found Minos—here, look at this.” Paying no mind to the age of the scroll, Aziraphale jabbed his finger to the ancient ink. “Look what it says, right here; a rough translation would be _When Pasiphaë was_ …”

Aziraphale stopped. He frowned at Crowley. “My dear boy,” he laid a hand on Crowley’s shoulder, “are you all right?”

Crowley swallowed. He gestured to the screen. “I think I found it, too.”

“Eh?” Aziraphale squinted at the screen.

He blinked.

He took his reading glasses from his pocket, put them on, and squinted again at the screen.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered, “how …?”

“Computers, angel.” Crowley laughed, or tried to, even though he knew Aziraphale would never be fooled by it. “They’ve come a long way since 1983, which you’d know if you ever bloody bothered to upgrade.”

There was too much on Aziraphale’s face; Crowley had to look away. He swallowed a few times and rubbed the back of his neck. “So,” he said, realizing that the swallowing wasn’t doing a damn thing but unable to do much about it. “You—you told him to love her.”

“What else could I do?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley shook his head. Not a denial, just—just something. Something, some gesture he could make with some part of this corporation that wasn’t threatening to spiral out of control. “I—I’m glad. Do—d’you reckon he listened?”

“I don’t know.” Papyrus rustled. “We could—”

“No,” Crowley said. He forced himself to take a deep breath. And then another. “We—we know enough now. Where to look, if nothing else.”

Crowley looked up and tried to force a smile. “We have what we need. So let’s go home, angel.”

* * *

[1] Crowley swore it wasn’t him.

[2] Actually, knowing Crowley, it rather did.

[3] Except, being a celestial being who hadn’t consumed gross matter in the past century, she couldn’t.

[4] Or Golders Green, Edgware or High Barnet. Just because one _could_ use liminals to travel between planes didn’t mean one _had_ to.

[5] Similar to a cell phone, but not on any network you’d recognize.

[6] On the way down, Aziraphale had asked Persephone how she was able to come with them, seeing as it was still summer in the human world. Persephone had looked up from fondling the dog’s ears and chirped, “Not in Australia!” and that been the end of that.

[7] The first time they’d been there – not the last. Crowley never thought about the last time if he could help it.

[8] Crowley would have suggested calling Aziraphale on his mobile, except Aziraphale didn’t have one, and he doubted there was any reception in the Underworld.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
> Want to chat more? Come give me a shout-out on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/)!


	5. Play the Game

A Prince of Hell, a Duke of Hell, and a lesser demon all walked into a bar across the street from Angel Underground Station in London. What they found waiting for them was not a punchline, but rather three archangels.[1]

The bar was most emphatically closed – doors locked, chairs up on the tables (except the one the archangels were using), cash register emptied, _closed_ – and that was on purpose. Mephistopheles had already had to explain why this was the optimal choice to his superiors more than once. The fewer humans who were around for this meeting, the better. Even if angels and demons could render themselves individually unnoticeable to human eyes,[2] put this many in a room and they would attract human attention.

Besides, if things did end up going south, humans would only get in the way.

“Beelzebub! Long time, no see!” Gabriel called out, raising his glass of … actually, Mephistopheles had no idea what was in that glass, or how Gabriel had gotten it, but it didn’t matter.

“We just saw each other,” Beelzebub pointed out ruthlessly. “At the airbase.”

“Right—right. That. Yeah.” If he had been a bit more human, Gabriel would have probably knocked back a fair bit of whatever-he-was-holding, but as it was, he shot the glass a puzzled glance and put it down again. “Anyway, this is Michael, and this is Samael—”

“I _know_ ,” Beelzebub said.

“But we don’t know your associates,” Gabriel said. “Or at least, _I_ don’t.”

Beelzebub sighed and rolled zir eyes. “Hastur, Mephistophelezz.” Ze pointed to each in turn. “Now sit.”

Hastur took the chair across from Michael, leaving Mephistopheles no choice but to take the one opposite Samael.

Mephistopheles had to give her credit: Samael displayed not a flicker of recognition when her gaze fell on him. If anything, she looked like she’d just smelled something rather distasteful. Admittedly Hastur could have provoked that reaction, but Mephistopheles rather suspected it was because she’d been on Earth for longer than five minutes and had yet to have a cigarette.

“So,” Beelzebub said. “You have an idea, I prezzume?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it an _idea_ ,” Gabriel said. “I just thought we could use a coordinated response, given the magnitude of the—”

“Fuck-up,” Beelzebub filled in.

Gabriel winced. Michael sighed. After a heartbeat’s pause that Mephistopheles hoped only he noticed, Samael wrinkled her nose.

“And it wazzz a fuck-up,” Beelzebub continued ruthlessly. “Forget Armageddon. We couldn’t even kill the bastardzz, and then not two dayzz later they’re going off-grid. How the blessed Heaven did that happen?”

“Well, it wasn’t _my_ department,” Gabriel said. “Er, that is …” He shook his head. “Look, clearly, just keeping an eye on our former agents through established channels isn’t going to work. Although speaking of which …” He raised an eyebrow.

“Yezz?” Beelzebub asked.

“Did you, er, bring copies of the demon’s …?”

“Crowley’zz movements? I did.” Beelzebub reached into zir jacket and pulled out a sheaf of dot-matrix printer paper, with the sprocket holes still attached.

“Great, I’ll be taking—”

Beelzebub smacked Gabriel’s hand down. “The angel’zz?”

For a moment, Gabriel didn’t move. Then, with a thin, tight smile, he reached into his jacket with his free hand. “Of course.” Out came his own sheaf of paper, crisp white sheets fresh from the laser printer.

Gabriel put his paper down on the table.

Beelzebub put zir paper down on the table.

Either could have reached for the other’s pile. But that would have required letting go of their own.

Mephistopheles saw a muscle in Samael’s cheek twitch – impatience for sure. In any other circumstances, she would have already ripped both sets of printouts from their respective owners’ hands and distributed them around the table. But if this meeting was ultimately about creating a rapprochement between Heaven and Hell, then Samael was here to ensure that the whole thing was a massive waste of time, so she wouldn’t do that.

Mephistopheles almost felt proud of her.

And really, if it was going to be this much trouble simply to hand over some printouts, maybe he and Samael had nothing to worry about. Certainly Mephistopheles wasn’t going to be helping things along. Hastur was leaning back in his chair with a smug grin as he watched the standoff. And neither Beelzebub nor Gabriel was going to budge. So they were quite safe, really—

Michael sighed and snapped her fingers, and two printouts appeared before each person at the table.

Mephistopheles bit back a sigh. _Well, it was worth a hope._ Then, to keep up appearances, he forced himself to read what was in front of him.

He wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to be looking for, if anything, so he was rather relieved when Gabriel huffed. “They’re practically living in each other’s pockets!”

“So it appearzz,” Beelzebub sighed.

“I don’t understand it.” Gabriel sat back, confusion written on every line of his do-you-really-have-to-be-that-handsome face. “It was one thing when we assumed that your man was trying to make our man Fall—”

“Or your man make our man rizze,” Beelzebub countered.

“What?” Samael snapped. “That’s impossible. Demons can’t rise. You lot are supposed to stay where we threw you.”

Hastur puffed up, and Mephistopheles scowled to hide his smile. Now Hastur would come out with something stupid, and Samael would follow it up with something confrontational, and within a few minutes this dangerous meeting would be _over_ —

That didn’t happen.

Instead, a sound like three sets of church bells going off at once came from one side of the table – while from the other side, two sets of unholy beeping emerged.

Samael, Gabriel, and Michael each dug their cel-phones from their pockets, while Beelzebub and Hastur hastily pulled their pagers out. Leaving Mephistopheles with nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs (metaphorically) and try not to drool over Samael’s cel-phone (all too literally).[3]

Hastur’s wordless growl of rage was the first sign that something not particularly pleasant had happened. Michael’s soft tut-tut was the second.

“Our man’s back in Angel station,” Gabriel said.

“Ourzz too,” Beelzebub confirmed.

“Right,” Samael said.

And stood up.

“Enough beating around the burning bush. Celestial observation isn’t good enough; we need people on the ground to keep an eye on the traitors. Ones who can _act_ instead of sending interns with printouts to the higher-ups.”

Then she pointed to Mephistopheles. “You—what’s your name again? Methamphetamine?”

Mephistopheles was too surprised to say anything other than the first thing that came to mind, which thankfully was, “Ah, Mephistopheles.”

“Close enough. Come on, you’re coming with me. We’re tailing the traitors.”

Mephistopheles was already half-out of his seat, but Beelzebub’s hand locked on his wrist. “I don’t think so. You’re walking off with my demon for Satan knowzzz how long?”

Samael fixed Beelzebub with a gaze that said that ze really was too stupid for words. “No. I’m taking your demon to help me tail a pair of traitors. And if it makes you feel better, I’m planning on sending him after the angel and me after the demon if they split. You can decide how long we’ll be doing this – work out the details for shifts and such amongst yourselves. Honestly, the sooner I’m relieved of this mess, the happier I’ll be.”

Beelzebub narrowed zir eyes, but Michael’s happy gasp cut through it. “Oh! So we can each track both of them! Oh, that’s _brilliant_ , Samael!”

“I try,” was all Samael said, before cocking an eyebrow at Mephistopheles. “Ready, Megafauna?”

“Wait,” Gabriel said. “You said _can act_. What _exactly_ are you planning on doing?”

Samael glared, and Mephistopheles was uncomfortably aware that this was the angel who had played a starring role in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. “As long as they stay on Earth? Nothing more than watch. If they try to leave? Whatever it takes to keep them here.”

Gabriel frowned, eyes narrowed … but after a few seconds that felt like years, he nodded.

“ _Finally_! Come on, Metatarsals, before we lose them!”

Mephistopheles didn’t bother to correct her. Beelzebub had let go of his wrist, and that was all the encouragement he needed to run after Samael as she dashed from the bar.

As soon as the door was safely shut behind him, though, he couldn’t contain himself any longer. “Samael, that was—”

“Shhh,” Samael waved a hand at him, but she barely looked at him, too busy scanning the street and the station in front of them. “There—oh, _shit_!”

Mephistopheles looked and nearly blessed. There, not more than a street-width away, were the two traitors …

And they were already getting into the long black automobile that was parked right in front of the station.

“Shit, shit, shit …” Samael muttered below her breath, until—“Ah, there’s one!”

“There’s—” Mephistopheles didn’t have a chance to finish, as all four tires of an automobile that was rolling past them blew out spectacularly.

“Get in, get in! I’ll control the driver; you keep us from getting discorporated on the way!”

That was not _nearly_ enough of a plan to be getting on with, but seeing little alternative, he followed Samael’s instructions and Samael herself into the back of the vehicle.

“Hey! What’s all—” started the driver.

He didn’t get a chance to finish. “Do Not Be Afraid,” Samael said, her voice dripping with celestial command and twisting something in Mephistopheles’s spine. “I Am The Messenger Of The Lord, And You Will Do Exactly As I Say.”

Mephistopheles glanced at the rearview mirror, where he could see the driver’s face go slack in the way that humans’ faces tended to so when confronting the majesty of the divine-adjacent.

Samael snapped her fingers, and Mephistopheles felt the frisson of a miracle.[4] At the same time, he heard the squeal of tires that were clearly attempting to shatter the current zero-to-sixty record in Islington.[5]

“Follow That Car. The One That’s Going Fast,” Samael said, and the driver slammed on the accelerator to obey. Samael glanced once at Mephistopheles and nodded.

As for Mephistopheles, he grabbed the headrest in front of him, took a deep breath, and started throwing out demonic miracles left, right, and center.

He’d need every one of them if they were to successfully tail a demon who drove like a bat out of hell.

* * *

The trouble with stakeouts, Ariadne was coming to realize, was that no one ever mentioned how _boring_ they were.

She’d been parked[6] at the coffee shop across the street from A.Z. Fell & Co.: Antiquarian and Unusual Books most of the day before. And here she was again. Waiting for the shop to open, if it ever would. Hoping that this was the bookshop the angel ran, and that she wasn’t wasting her time and drinking far too many terrible coffees on a wild goose chase. _Praying_ that this might where she finally got an answer.

This had to be the place, didn’t it? Ariadne took her phone out and checked her math. First – the picture from the PowerPoint, the one showing the angel and the demon and the black Bentley in front of a shop. The shop _definitely_ said A.Z. Fell & Co., and …

Ariadne’s gaze flickered upward, as if she hadn’t just been staring at the maroon shopfront and beige brick building. Yes, this was definitely the same place.

And next, the Yelp page.[7]

Ariadne’s eyes flicked over the reviews for what had to be the hundredth time. One mentioned weird lights and strange sounds. Several played up the owner’s strange fashion sense. A couple talked about random good deeds he’d done for people who stumbled into his shop. Another laid out a litany of curious and unusual happenings, ranging from plants that didn’t die to odd books that felt like magic. Even the ones that mentioned the owner’s boyfriend tracked with what Ariadne had guessed about the angel when she’d seen him in the Ritz.

Granted, she was less sure what to make of the reviews that mentioned a snake – didn’t the Abrahamic faiths have a thing about snakes? – but surely the weight of the circumstantial evidence was in her favor.

Ariadne sighed and ran a hand through her hair. Not that any of it made a difference if the shop wouldn’t open …

She glanced out the window again, hoping against hope—

Nothing.

_Maybe I should try calling? … Again._ She’d tried calling most of yesterday. All she had gotten for her trouble were endless rings. Did the owner not even have voicemail?

Still, it couldn’t hurt to try again—

Her phone buzzed, and Ariadne jumped. Rolling her eyes at herself, she glanced at the notification. A text from … Persephone?

**Heeeeey gurl!**

Ariadne blinked. But she shouldn’t have been surprised. If anything, she should have been more surprised that this hadn’t happened sooner.

Ariadne began to reply, only to be greeted by blinking ellipses. She waited.

**You still in London?**

Ariadne texted back, **Yep. Pretty sure your father would zap anyone who tried to leave before he said so**

**Haha oh boy. Don’t tell him where I went then**

Ariadne’s only reply was an arched-eyebrow emoji.

**Had some business in the underworld**

**Oh is that what they’re calling it these days?** The rest of Ariadne’s reply consisted of eggplants, water droplets, and similar emojis.

**HAHAHAHAHA as if you have any room to judge!**

**What’s that supposed to mean?**

Now it was Persephone’s turn to send an arched eyebrow emoji. **Come on what’s the one reason you’re in town at all?**

**Hey I LIKE London**

Persephone opened her next text with crying/laughing emojis. **Just not the rest of us?**

Ariadne snickered while she tried to think of a reply. And glanced at the shop across the way, just in case.

Still no movement.

Her phone buzzed again, and Ariadne looked down.

**Not that I can say anything. I married the lord of the dead to have an excuse to get away from them all for six months of the year**

Now Ariadne’s actual eyebrow arched. **That’s a little cold for you**

Then, after a moment’s thought, **Did Eris steal this phone?**

A series of rapid-fire texts from Persephone followed:

**HA**

**She wouldn’t DARE**

**She lives down here and I’m queen**

**I can say no more tabletop and she’s SOL**

Ariadne snickered even as she typed. **LOL you wouldn’t actually do that**

The ellipses flashed for quite a while after that, and when Persephone’s reply finally came through, Ariadne could see why.

**No but a girl can dream. ANYWAY I actually had something to ask you! Are you free for lunch?**

Ariadne winced. At any other time, lunch with Persephone would be great, but …

Well, she did have an excuse. **D & I are going to a show at the globe at noon so lunch is a no-go. Maybe tomorrow?**

The ellipses started to flash almost immediately after that. That didn’t surprise Ariadne in the slightest.

What was surprising was that they didn’t stop flashing. _What on earth is she trying to say?_

She might have wondered that for a while, but a sudden squeal of brakes cut that thought off with extreme prejudice.

Ariadne looked up, of course. It was what you did when you heard what sounded like the beginnings of a three-car pileup right in front of you.

But that wasn’t what she saw.

She gasped deeply enough and sharply enough that, were a barometer present in the coffee shop, it shown a noticeable drop in air pressure.

A black antique Bentley had pulled up to the curb outside the shop so quickly that the tires were smoking. And getting out of it were—

_Blondie and Sunglasses!_

They were heading into the shop. Ariadne’s hands shook as she shoved her phone back into her purse and started to gather the coffee mugs and plates she’d used.

_Wait. Ariadne. Wait for them to open the shop first._

So she sat. Hands folded in front of her like a schoolgirl. Ignoring her entire purse vibrating as Persephone’s text finally came through.

But no matter how carefully she sat, the sign on the shop door didn’t flip. And she’d know if it did. Even if she was too far away to read it, she’d see the movement.

She made it for perhaps five minutes at a generous estimate before her patience ran out.

_Screw it._ Ariadne snapped her fingers, returning pristine plates and mugs to the cupboards and depositing the trash in the trash. Then she grabbed her purse and practically ran out of the coffee shop.

She crossed the street without looking and would have been run over twice, had the drivers barreling toward her not found themselves suddenly on the other side of the jogging red-haired young woman.

She didn’t even pause to give the Bentley a second glance, though the car practically begged for it.

Finally, she stood at the shop door. She reached for the handle—

Locked. Of course.

Well, that wouldn’t take a moment to fix.

Ariadne closed her eyes and gently nudged the universe in the direction she wanted it to go. The universe resisted – enough to make Ariadne frown – but only for a moment.

Even on the busy street, the click of the latch was music to her ears.

Then …

There was nothing for Ariadne to do but square her shoulders, throw open the door, and go in.

* * *

“Did you see that?” Mephistopheles asked.

“Eh?” Samael replied. She knew she should have been watching the street, but this thrice-damned lighter was giving her no help whatsoever.

Mephistopheles put a hand on her arm. “That woman—the redhead. An automobile practically teleported around her.”

_That_ got Samael to look up.

It was easy to guess where Mephistopheles was looking – even in the London gloom, the young-looking woman’s hair glinted like fire.

That, and as Samael watched, another vehicle did the same thing.

“What the fuck?” she asked.

“Yeah. You think maybe she’s …” Mephistopheles raised his eyebrows and let them ask the question for him.

“Maybe …” Samael murmured. The redhead clearly wasn’t human, and the idea that she might be from wherever the traitors had gone to wasn’t too far a stretch. Samael reached out with her other senses, trying to get a glimpse of the woman’s aura or her spiritual signature.

Nothing. Or rather, too much something. Picking the redhead’s spiritual signature out of this mess was like listening to three symphony orchestras’ worth of instruments, each playing a different tune, while trying to track down the one playing “Amazing Grace.”

“Fuck,” Samael said. Then, quirking an eyebrow at Mephistopheles, “You?”

Mephistopheles’s eyes narrowed, but he had to shake his head. “No.”

Samael growled low in her throat – the sound made the half-dozen nearest humans shudder, not just the “goose walking over my grave” chills, but full-body shudders – and leaned against the doorway she and the demon were lurking in.[8] What was worst was that Samael couldn’t even turn back to her lighter – duty and logic told her that she _had_ to keep both eyes on the woman.

That was why she saw, clear as day, how the woman walked up to the angel’s shop, put a hand on the door, and walked right in.

“Do you think …” Mephistopheles glanced sidelong at Samael. “Should we call that in?”

Samael said nothing, eyes narrowed, arms crossed, brain whirling.

If they called this in … talked about a mysterious visitor to the angel’s shop who could bend reality around her … lots of things could happen. They could be told to keep watching, see what happened. Or Heaven and Hell could send a joint task force out to deal with the problem. If they played their cards right, they could probably manage to wipe out the angel, the demon, and the redhead in one fell swoop, maybe even taking the bookshop out, too.

Of course, if Heaven and Hell played their cards right, that meant that things would be going _wrong_ for Mephistopheles and Samael – because there were few things that better bonded soldiers who used to be enemies than winning a battle together.

The fact that Heaven and Hell were unlikely to play their cards right was not enough insurance against that.

“Best not,” Samael said. “For now – we watch and learn.”

Mephistopheles nodded. “Fair enough.” Then he glanced at her, smiled, and held out a thumb.

It was on fire.

“Light?”

Samael smirked, chuckled, and brought her cigarette up to it. “You know me too well.”

“After all these years, I’d better.”

Then, with one last smile at each other, Samael retreated to her corner of the doorway, Mephistopheles retreated to his, and they settled in for a long period of watching and, hopefully, learning.

* * *

When they pulled up next to the bookshop, something inside Crowley unwound.

Not all the way. Too much had happened since the Armageddidn’t and everything that had gone before for Crowley to really unwind. He’d need at least a decade of peace and quiet before he’d even consider it, and even then he might not, too busy waiting for the next shoe to drop.

But the bookshop. The bookshop, to him, was safe in a way that Heaven, Hell, Eden, and even his own flat had never been. Never mind that he’d seen the whole blessed thing burn to the ground. Or that at least one other deity had managed to get past whatever wards Aziraphale had on the front door. The feeling ran deeper than logic and did not respond to facts.

“Well, thank you for getting us here in one piece, dear boy,” Aziraphale said, in a tone that made it clear that as far as he was concerned, it had been a near thing.

“You know me, safest driver on the block.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes, but there was a hint of a smile as he did so. And then he got out of the car.

Crowley followed suit, but not before checking his mirrors. He wasn’t in the habit of doing so – whether in motion or not – except, while he was driving, he could have sworn he saw a little nondescript gray car following them …

There was no nondescript gray car there now. Maybe he was just being paranoid.

_But if they really are out to get you, how paranoid can you be?_

“Coming?” Aziraphale asked over his shoulder, and Crowley, remembering where he was and what he was supposed to be doing, followed him into the shop.

As soon as they were both inside, Aziraphale gently shooed Crowley away from the door and did – something to it, probably locking it. Crowley wasn’t paying attention. The _safe_ feeling had settled over his shoulders again. The incandescent lamps the angel flicked on filled the space with a warm glow, revealing the familiar sights of groaning bookshelves, well-worn floors, and ancient tomes. The air was redolent with the comforting scents of dust, paper, and cocoa. And then there was Aziraphale, bustling behind him and past him.

“We really ought to discuss things, you know. Start planning next steps, now that we know … what we know.”

Crowley threw his head back and barely bit back a groan. “What we really ought to do is have a drink.”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake – Crowley, it’s not even noon yet.”

“So?” Crowley asked, although a part of his mind was asking, _Ngk???_ He glanced at his watch and tapped it a couple of times.

The hour and minute hands spun rather alarmingly before the universe and the watch righted themselves and the latter showed Crowley the time. The angel had been right – it was not yet noon.

_But what day?_

Crowley shook his head. That was the trouble with inter-plane travel. Even if the people you were traveling with swore by the Styx that they weren’t doing anything to mess up the timestream, time still went fuzzy around the edges. Couldn’t be helped.

But did it matter? It wasn’t like anyone Upstairs or Downstairs cared how they spent their time anymore – no, scratch that, they probably _did_ care, deeply; they’d merely forfeited all right to complain.

“We should at least pretend to be civilized people, Crowley,” said Aziraphale, drawing Crowley from his thoughts again.

_Civilized what?—oh, right. Drinking._ “Civilization is overrated,” Crowley said, heading to the back room and throwing himself onto the sofa. Which may have been a mistake; he found himself precariously balanced on a pivot point where, if he were any less vertical, he’d immediately become horizontal and sleep for a week.

“’Sides,” he went on, as much to keep himself awake as anything else, “it’s five o’clock somewhere. M’watch says so.”

Crowley held up said watch, or at least the wrist it was attached to, and waved it at Aziraphale. Aziraphale, for his part, was bestowing upon him a gaze that was equal parts fond, exasperated, worried, and completely missing the reference.[9]

Finally Aziraphale sighed and shook his head. “I’ll see if Adam put anything drinkable in the wine cellar.”

“You do that, angel,” Crowley said. He sprawled on the sofa, bringing both feet up. “I’ll be right here.”

He couldn’t see Aziraphale shaking his head, but he could feel it, and he could definitely hear the angel’s brogues tap-tap-tapping away.

Maybe Crowley shouldn’t have put his feet up – though he was most emphatically not lying down, even if his corporation did seem ready to do that of its own accord.

Still, he thought as he leaned his head against the lumpy back of the sofa, as long as he didn’t lie down properly, he’d be all right … he’d just close his eyes for a couple minutes, no harm in doing that …

How long he sat there he wasn’t sure. Time, once again, went a bit fuzzy around the edges. He could hear, vaguely, Aziraphale messing about in the wine cellar below … hurried footsteps up the stairs … yes, all normal sounds, all what he expected to hear …

The merry ring of the shop-bell … Aziraphale’s most apologetic tone, “Oh, I’m so sorry, but we’re—”

_CRASH!_ And the tinkle of broken glass.

Crowley’s eyes flew open and he was rolling off the sofa before his legs quite knew what they were supposed to be doing.

_Shit fuck shit fuck fuck fuck SHIT!_ What in Heaven’s name had he been playing at, falling asleep? He finally found his legs and stumbled to his feet, running into the shop proper.

“ _ANGEL!_ Angel, where—”

Crowley skidded to a halt as soon as he left the back room.

The first thing Crowley noticed was Aziraphale. Standing with his back to him, frozen in shock, but alive and seemingly whole. All in all, an encouraging sign.

The second thing Crowley noticed was the bottle of wine by Aziraphale’s feet. Or what had once been a bottle of wine. Now it was a pile of broken glass and a blood-red stain seeping into the ancient wood.

The third thing Crowley noticed—

The third thing Crowley noticed knocked the wind clean out of him and made him nearly swallow his tongue.

Which made it rather strange, all things considered, that Crowley was the first of them to find his voice.

“Ariadne?” 

* * *

[1] Well, there might be a punchline, eventually. It would depend on how the meeting went.

[2] Invisible was possible, too, but unnoticeable was better than invisible. Humans _noticed_ if what should have been empty air refused to let them pass, or if the empty chair they were trying to swing over to their table weighed as much as a chair with a whole body in it. Whereas if angels and demons simply made themselves unnoticeable, not only would humans go out of their way to avoid these little inconveniences, _they wouldn’t even realize they were doing it_.

[3] Covetousness wasn’t one of Mephistopheles’s favorite sins, but he made an exception for cel-phones. He’d seen Samael’s once and had _wanted_ it with the blazing passion of a thousand suns ever since.

[4] He also felt the automobile rise a few inches, now that the tires were fixed.

[5] Which was held by Crowley.

[6] Metaphorically speaking. The Uber had long since left.

[7] To read the reviews in all of their brilliant glory, check out Sparse Clutter by ItsClydeBitches, Chapter 6: <https://archiveofourown.org/works/19364431/chapters/46364224>

[8] It should be noted that Mephistopheles was much better at the lurking part.

[9] The last one was nothing new. Neither were the first three, if Crowley were being honest with himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
> Want to chat more? Come give me a shout-out on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Also! Now that I've got the first five chapters up, I plan to move to a Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday update schedule. So I will see you all with the next chapter on Thursday!


	6. The Chapter of Revelations

They’d hidden her away. Spent nearly four thousand years not thinking about her (or “not thinking” about her) because anything else was too painful or too risky. Stopped an apocalypse (more or less) and escaped being murdered by their own compatriots by the skin of their teeth. Decided, under no small amount of duress, that it was past time to look for her. Followed the clue they’d been given to another clue. And now, after all that …

_She_ had found _them_.

If Aziraphale needed any proof that, in spite of (or perhaps because of) everything, the Almighty still had a soft spot for him and Crowley, it was standing right in front of him now. The young lady from the Ritz. The young lady from the photo Hera had given him. _Ariadne_.

And if Aziraphale had needed a reminder that the Almighty’s plan was called _ineffable_ for a reason, that was also standing in front of him. Because Ariadne, the young lady from the Ritz and the photo, looked about two seconds away from bolting through the door from which she’d come.

“How,” she was staring at Crowley, pointing at him, her other hand clutching her purse, “how do you know my name?”

Aziraphale glanced over his shoulder to see Crowley wincing. “Oh … bugger.”

“That’s not an answer,” she said, and took a full step back.

A rather loud and obnoxious alarm bell – less a bell and more like the air-raid sirens used during the war – began to sound in Aziraphale’s mind. Because while the Almighty was not cruel – even after all he’d seen, Aziraphale would never believe that of Her – She was also, at best, only _slightly_ inclined to help Her children out of their own messes. She’d given them the ingredients; it was up to them to make the crepes.

And crepes were so very, very easy to get wrong.

“Wait!” Aziraphale said, and yes, it sounded panicked, and yes, it sounded desperate, and no, there wasn’t anything he could do about that, so best to move past it. “That is—my dear …”

Aziraphale stood up straight, folded his hands in front of him, _smiled_ , and did everything in his considerable power to project both Do Not Be Afraid and I Am Here To Help.

He glanced sidelong at Crowley to find that he was doing much the same thing. In his case it was a bit more slouched, a little less Do Not Be Afraid and a little more Trusssst In Me, with a definite hiss on the s. But it was the thought that counted.

With the tableau in place, there was nothing for Aziraphale to do but to widen his smile and say in his best customer service voice, “How can we help you?”

Ariadne’s gaze volleyed between the two of them, and Aziraphale wracked his brain for something, anything, that would keep the panic in her eyes from spreading and getting her to run. Yet try though he might, he just couldn’t _think_ —

Or rather, he didn’t have time to.

Ariadne had blinked and was staring at the dropped wine bottle.

She looked at Aziraphale—at Crowley—

Then she snapped her fingers, and the wine bottle appeared in her hand. Whole again, and, to judge by the slosh, full.

But Ariadne wasn’t holding it like a wine bottle – or at least, not like a wine bottle someone intended to drink from. Instead she had one hand on the neck of it, and she tapped the butt of it into her other hand. _Thwack, thwack, thwack._

“Look,” she said, as if they were about to do anything else, “you’re not the only people in this room with a couple of tricks up your sleeves, ok?”

Something about the way she said that reminded him of that dear young witch, Anathema, and the way she had matter-of-factly told him that she had a bread knife. Aziraphale couldn’t quite help the small smile.

“Oh, we can see that,” said Crowley. Aziraphale dared a glance back at him to see that Crowley had managed to make himself even more nonthreatening, and not least because he was now lounging so loosely against a bookshelf that a single stiff breeze could knock him over.

Once again, Ariadne looked from Crowley to Aziraphale and back again. Once again, Aziraphale smiled.

Ariadne took a deep breath. And chuckled. “You know … this wasn’t how I imagined this would go.”

“O-oh?” Aziraphale asked, or at least, that was what the encouraging noise that came out of him was meant to be.

“I figured I’d get yelled at about the door,” she nodded her head toward it, a faint rueful smile flashing across her face, “and, you know, the fact that you’re closed.”

“Oh—well, no harm done,” Aziraphale replied. Or at least he assumed there was no harm done. The door looked all right, and surely he could miracle away any damage that he couldn’t see. “And …”

He cast about desperately for something, anything to say – something that would cut down on the tension and keep her, keep all of them calm.

And he had it.

It was a risk, of course – a gamble – but what about this wasn’t a gigantic gamble?

Aziraphale took a deep breath and cast his dice. “And, well, there’s always _xenia_ to consider.”

Her eyes went wide, and Aziraphale was fairly sure he was not imagining the faint gasp.

“ _Xenia_ ,” she repeated. Her accent was much better than his – which was to say, she didn’t have one. She said the word like someone who had been speaking Greek from her cradle would. “You’re willing to play by those rules?”

“Of course,” Aziraphale replied, not daring to turn around and give Crowley a _play along, play along!_ look. “After all,” he tried to chuckle and didn’t quite succeed, “we all know how Zeus treats those who break them, and I’d hate to have to tangle with him, wouldn’t you?”

She winced. “Let’s not bring Zeus into this.” She swallowed. “Besides, if we’re going to play by _xenia_ … I should have brought a gift.”

“You’re holding a bottle of wine,” Crowley pointed out. “Seems like a good enough gift to me.”

Aziraphale found himself praying that, no matter how she knew of them, knew enough to go looking for them, she didn’t realize just how out of character that was for Crowley to say. Watching others stew in their own juices was one of his favorite pleasures. To actively try to cut the tension and embarrassment …

Well, while there were some people he would do that for, it was a very small and extremely exclusive list.[1]

“Right, that originally belonged to you two. I don’t think that …” Ariadne trailed off, her eyes going to the label. They widened. “Yikes.”

Aziraphale winced. “Er, yes, about that …” Adam had _tried_ , he really had, but an eleven-year-old could only be supposed to know so much about wine. This had looked like the most drinkable of the lot, and Aziraphale suspected it was because it was modeled after a wine that the Youngs kept in the house.[2] “It’s been a trying few days around here.”

Ariadne didn’t reply at first. Instead, she snapped her fingers again and held the wine bottle back out. “Here. Better now.”

“Thank you, dear,” he said automatically, before glancing at the label. “Oh! That _is_ better.”

“I try,” she said with a small smile.

Aziraphale smiled back, something a little like relief flooding through him, except—well, it was really too soon for that. “Would you like to sit down?” he asked, remembering his manners. “There’s a sofa in the back room – chairs …”

“All sorts of things. Very comfy,” Crowley put in helpfully.

Ariadne’s eyes brightened, then narrowed. After a moment, she nodded. “Sure – lead the way.”

And Aziraphale did so, miracling three glasses into existence. “Here – make yourself at home. I’ll just—er …”

He wasn’t sure what he would do, but he did note that she took a chair – and moreover, the one closest to the door. So they hadn’t quite earned their way into trust yet.

Crowley took a seat on the sofa as always; Aziraphale snapped a corkscrew into existence and sat down beside him. Then he busied himself with opening the bottle and pouring, and of course, trying not to be caught watching Ariadne through his lashes.

She was sitting on the edge of the seat, and when Aziraphale handed her a glass, she smiled politely but didn’t drink. Aziraphale considered proposing a toast (to _what_?) but decided that was too forward.

Instead he watched as Ariadne held her hand in the practiced, studied way of one who had held similar glasses without taking a drink many, many times before. It put him off drinking too, and a sidelong glance at Crowley showed it had done the same for him.

“So …” Aziraphale said, casting about for something, anything to say.

“ _Xenia_ says that the guest isn’t asked questions until after a meal,” Ariadne said.

“Oh, would you like something to eat? I’m sure I could—”

“No—no, no, thank you.” Ariadne fiddled with the wineglass, her eyes nervously alighting on Aziraphale and then Crowley and then back again.

She took a deep breath. And with the attitude of someone making a decision and throwing caution to the wind, she put the glass down on the nearest flat surface and scooted even farther forward on the chair.

“Look,” she said, “I have no idea _why_ you two haven’t just chased me off yet, or how you know my name, but—well, the thing is, I can very, very easily be out of your hair if that’s what you want. I just—I _need_ to know something, and you two are my only hope for finding out.”

“Oh, my dear—” Aziraphale began, while Crowley made a noise that couldn’t quite be put into words.

She held up a finger, asking for quiet, and they gave it to her. She took another deep breath.

“You’re an angel,” she said, pointing at Aziraphale, “and you’re a demon,” she pointed to Crowley. Then, slowly, brought her finger back again. “White wings … black wings.”

“That’s—that’s all quite correct,” Aziraphale said.

“Ok. Ok, great. Do—do all demons and angels have wings like that?”

“Yeah,” Crowley answered. Aziraphale very nearly jumped. “Or at least, close enough. Some … some demons get a bit more creative. You don’t want to get to know them, though.”

Aziraphale could see Ariadne swallow; it was as plain as the hurried nod. “Great. Ok.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “So … do you …”

She let the sentence trail. Rolled her shoulders. Stretched her neck from side to side. And then—

Her wings unfurled.

They were familiar – even though Aziraphale had never seen them before, they were so familiar. Same size (relative to Ariadne) and shape as his own, as Crowley’s, as every other angel’s or demon’s wings he had ever seen. Same bone structure, same feathers in the same places. The only difference was that instead of being white or black, hers were a soft dove-gray: the perfect midpoint of the two.

But as fascinating as her wings were, Aziraphale didn’t stare at them for long. Ariadne’s face was far more interesting. Much as she strove to hide it, the struggle of hope and fear was far too obvious to ignore.

Then, finally, she finished her question.

“Do you have any idea,” she whispered, “any idea at all what gray wings could mean?”

* * *

Whatever Ariadne had expected when she finally forced the question out … this wasn’t it.

They were barely even looking at her wings. Or at least Blondie—the angel— _Aziraphale_ wasn’t. He was watching her face with an expression she couldn’t read. Something like confusion and realization and dismay all happening at once.

The demon—Sunglasses— _Crowley_ was harder to puzzle out, in no small part because of the sunglasses, at least until he dropped his head into his hands and groaned. “Oh, bloody fuck.”

“ _Crowley_!” Aziraphale hissed.

“She has no idea,” Crowley went on, somewhat muffled by his hands. “No clue. None whatsoever.”

“Yes, I can _see_ that—”

“No clue about what?” Ariadne interrupted.

They knew something. Something that wasn’t good, probably, but so what? If they _knew_ something, then—then Ariadne would deal with it after she knew it. And no matter how bad it was, knowing had to be better than not knowing.

“Look,” she went on before either of them could come up with a reason not to tell her, “you two—you have _no idea_ how long I’ve been searching for an answer. Or even a clue to get an answer. I’ve asked everyone I can think of – the Fates, the Norns, you name it, I’ve asked around, and—nothing. If you—if you know anything, just tell me what you want, and I’ll …”

She trailed off. The angel was softly smiling. Sadly too. Something in it made Ariadne guess that he wasn’t in the mood for bargaining. “Oh, my dear, I think we understand a bit more than you think we do.”

“… Oh.” Ariadne began to twist her hands together. “So, you’ll … help? Seriously, I’ll take anything.”

“Yeah.” That was Crowley, looking up. “Yeah, we can help. Get you some answers. Sure.”

She might have said something; probably she ought to have said something; she didn’t have a chance. Aziraphale had given his wineglass a longing glance and then with clear reluctance set it aside. “So, to start with your first question – the wings. I think – I could be wrong – but I do believe you’ve already somewhat guessed what they might mean? White wings, angel; black wings, demon; gray wings—”

“Both. Half-and-half,” Crowley filled in.

And Ariadne—

Her mind stuttered to a halt. So that—that was what she was. Half angel, half demon. A hybrid. Like—maybe a little like a demigod, or like—

_Asterion …_

If she followed that thought any further, she was going to start bawling, and she was not ready to do that in front of a pair of strangers, no matter how helpful they were willing to be. “Is there—is there a name? For that?”

And on the heels of that question, dozens of others crowding her mind: _Who are the others, how many are there, how can I find them, please please please tell me …_

But one thing at a time. Especially since the one question she’d already asked had Aziraphale and Crowley exchanging a glance that lasted half an instant and spoke for hours.

“Um,” Crowley said, “a name.”

“The humans might have one. In … some language.” Aziraphale waved a hand. “Possibly even English; they’re _very_ clever about words and names and … things. Stands to reason, I suppose, since the Almighty did tell Adam—”

“Angel,” Crowley said, nudging Aziraphale with an elbow.

“Er—right, that’d be a tangent, wouldn’t it? And you haven’t … oh dear. So. A name. As—as far as I’m aware, no, your, er, species doesn’t have one.”

“… Oh.” Silly to feel disappointed by that. What did she need a name for? She had a description; that was more than she’d had ten minutes ago.

“’Cause, you see …” Crowley was rolling his wineglass between his hands; he paused only long enough to down the entire thing. “There wasn’t much need for a name. Since, er …”

“To our knowledge … you’re the only one,” Aziraphale finished.

Ariadne stared.

She blinked.

Her mouth was very dry. And her throat was thick. “W-what?”

No. No, this couldn’t be right. She hadn’t been looking and hoping and searching for all these years for—it wasn’t a _species_ she was looking for, it was a _people_ , a tribe, a _family_ , and she hadn’t spent this long looking for it only to be told at the end of it all that she was still alone.

“Then—wait, how do you know? That I’m a half-angel, half-demon?” she asked. “I mean, if there’s only one – if I’m the only you’ve seen—then—then maybe …”

“Oh! Well, we were there when you were born, dear. That is, in a matter of speaking. That you were born—really it was more of a,” Aziraphale waved his hands vaguely, “spontaneous manifestation—”

Crowley put his hand on Aziraphale’s knee, stilling him at once. “What the angel is trying to say is—we’re your parents.”

Once again, Ariadne’s mind stuttered and went still.

_… Parents?_

“How …” Ariadne’s eyebrow arched as she surveyed the two very male-shaped beings in front of her. “How are you my parents?”

“Oh, we’re jumping into the deep end of parenting, are we?” asked Crowley. “Right. I’m going to need another drink for this.”

“Crowley—”

Crowley held up a finger to silence Aziraphale. With a snap of his fingers, his wineglass was full again; with a flick of his wrist, it was empty again. “Much better. Where were we? Ah, yes, when an angel and a demon love each other very, very much—”

“ _CROWLEY_!”

“ _What_?”

“My dear boy, _really_ , this is not the …” He didn’t finish; he was looking at Ariadne. “Oh. Oh, my dear. Are you all right? I’m sure this is all a bit of a shock …”

A shock? That was one way of putting it. Ariadne tried to swallow but couldn’t because of the dryness in her throat.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her wineglass, still full.

“You—you know,” she heard herself say, “a drink would be …” She didn’t bother to finish. She grabbed the glass, and with a flick of her wrist—

The wine nearly ended up going down her shirt when she realized what she’d just done. That flick of the wrist …

“My dear,” that was Aziraphale again, “you really don’t …”

He might have said more; Ariadne wasn’t listening. She’d caught Crowley’s eye – or at least, she looked at him, and he smiled, so she assumed some eye-catching had happened.

And then—

Ariadne slammed the wineglass onto the table and pulled pin after pin from her hair, until she had a big enough chunk to bring around and look at it.

Then she looked at Crowley’s hair.

Same color.

She looked at Aziraphale, and that—that was harder, because she couldn’t see her own face. But—but if she looked at his eyes …

“Holy _shit_ ,” she whispered.

And that seemed to spur Aziraphale into action. “Right,” he set, getting up, “I’m sorry, my dear, but you do not look well. Now—here, put your wings away, that’s it, and sit back. Very good. Deep breaths, now.”

Somewhere in that he’d put his hand on her shoulder. It was—warm. And comforting. Almost in spite of herself.

Ariadne took deep, shaky breath after deep, shaky breath and told herself to focus on that.

“Corporations are funny things, aren’t they?” Aziraphale asked, smiling. Ariadne wondered what Fortune 500 companies had to do with anything and decided she didn’t care enough to ask. Not when there were so many other things she wanted to know.

She turned to Crowley, a little surprised to find him teetering on the edge of the sofa, just like she’d been sitting on the edge of the chair not thirty seconds ago.

“You,” she pointed, “you said—you said the two of you loved – love? – each other.”

“Just a bit,” Crowley replied, and if the words didn’t say much, the tone said it all. Onto the next question, then.

“Then … then why …” Ariadne swallowed. “Why am I only meeting you now?”

Aziraphale winced. “Well—er, let me put it like this. Are you familiar with a play called _Romeo and Juliet_?”

Ariadne thought of a wattle-and-daub playhouse on the south shore of the Thames, the crunch of hazelnut shells under cork-soled shoes, pressing through the groundlings to get closer to the stage, knowing laughter at _That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet_ , and above all, Dionysus’s eyes as he had drunk all of it in. “That one,” he’d whispered to her before they left, “the one who wrote this – he’s _special_.”

“Just a bit,” Ariadne replied, and left it at that.

“Excellent! Well, imagine for yourself that Romeo and Juliet had a bit more luck than they do in the play, poor things, and that things had, er, gone on for—”

“Angel. No. No,” Crowley said. “There’s a time for metaphor and beating around the bush, and this isn’t it. Ariadne—look. The thing is. Hell? Hell isn’t nice, and it isn’t good. Heaven claims to be both, but between you, me, and the angel? They’re lying.”

Ariadne glanced at Aziraphale, to see how he took that, but all she saw was a knowing wince.

“And while Heaven and Hell don’t agree on much … one thing they do agree on is that they don’t like each other. At all. And they _really_ wouldn’t like any implication that, you know, maybe it doesn’t have to be this way. So, if they’d found out about _you_ …”

“Oh,” Ariadne said, because that did explain it all. Or at least enough. It was even comforting in a way, to know she hadn’t been tossed on a mountainside to keep her from killing her grandfather or destroying her city or killing her father and marrying her mother.

She took a deep breath, her next question on her lips—

Her phone buzzed, and Ariadne jumped half out of the seat—almost into poor Aziraphale.

“Sorry, sorry—let me just—” She pulled her phone out of her purse, and—

The first thing she saw was the time.

_Oh. Shit._

The next thing she saw was Dionysus’s text. **Where are you???**

“Crap,” Ariadne said.

“What? What’s wrong?” Aziraphale asked, peering at the phone.

“No, no, it’s nothing—just—I was going to meet someone at the Globe—you know, the new one? And now—well, I can just tell him that—no, godsdammit, I have the tickets—and there’s no way an Uber—”

“Uber?” Aziraphale asked.

“I don’t drive in London,” Ariadne said distractedly, “but now—crap, I certainly can’t run that fast—”

“I could drive you,” Crowley said.

“—and—wait, what?”

“Got my car out front. Would be easy enough to get you there.” Crowley shrugged. “If you still want to go, that is.”

Ariadne hesitated. She could just tell Dionysus that she’d lost track of time and wouldn’t be able to make it. The tickets didn’t matter that much – the God of Theater should be able to get himself inside a theater, tickets or no tickets.

But if she did that, she’d owe Dionysus an explanation, and this—this was not something she felt up to explaining …

She looked again at her phone. “The show starts in fifteen minutes.”

Crowley grinned. “Oh good. A challenge.”

“Oh, _no_ ,” Aziraphale groaned.

And that was what decided her.

“You know what? Ok. Let’s do this.” She popped out of the chair. “Globe Theatre – here we come.”

* * *

Were the new Globe the sort of theater that employed a curtain, it would have been five minutes before curtain-up. Dionysus was still standing in front of the theater.

And Ariadne was nowhere to be seen.

He pulled his phone from his pocket. Her last text had said that she was on her way. It had been sent ten minutes ago. There’d been nothing since.

He was not worried about them not being able to get into the theater or missing the show. The show wouldn’t start until he wanted it to, and theater policies about when one was supposed to be inside and in one’s seat simply did not apply to him and those in his entourage.

But Ariadne …

This wasn’t like her. She had always been the one to keep track of when showtime was, who had the tickets, when did they need to leave in order to get where they were going without having to bend the rules of space and time, etc. She’d been acting strangely since they’d met with his family; she’d disappeared entirely for most of the day before; and now this …

Dionysus put his phone away again and scanned the street. For what, he didn’t know. Ariadne hadn’t told him what the Uber she was presumably taking looked like. Or even if she was taking an Uber at all. Still, he watched, looking for _something_ —

What he saw – what everyone on the street saw; they couldn’t help it – was a black antique car rounding the corner on two wheels, speeding down the street, and coming to a stop so sudden it should have snapped the necks of every mortal sitting in it.

Before Dionysus had a chance to pick his jaw up off the floor, the back door of the car opened, and Ariadne spilled out of it. “Thanks again!” she called over her shoulder, before shutting the door behind her and trotting up to Dionysus. “So sorry! Come on, let’s go!”

Dionysus … didn’t want to do that.

What he _wanted_ to do was put both of his hands on Ariadne’s shoulders, hold her still, and give her a once-over. Because what he could see right now was not encouraging. She was smiling, yes, but not in a way that reached her eyes. A long lock of hair had worked its way out of her French twist to curl over her shoulder. And every movement seemed tense and jumpy.

But he didn’t get to do that, since Ariadne grabbed his elbow and all-but-dragged him forward while the other hand dug in her purse for the tickets. Dionysus contented himself with looking over his shoulder, only to see the black antique car execute a three-point turn that … really shouldn’t have been possible, at least not with a boat of a car like that.

And—was he going insane, or was that car only a two-door? But then how had Ariadne—

“Is everything all right?” Dionysus asked heard himself asking.

“Lost track of time—got distracted. Sorry!” Ariadne said, which didn’t answer the question at all.

And then there was nothing to do but to go through the familiar rigmarole of handing over their tickets and being ushered into the theater. They’d gotten groundling tickets, so at least they didn’t have to worry about making their way through the upper galleries and disturbing other patrons as they tried to find their seats.

Normally, he and Ariadne would melt into the crowd and quietly insinuate themselves into one of the best viewing-areas of the house, but today … today Ariadne stopped as soon as she found an empty space big enough for the two of them, and Dionysus stopped next to her. And as soon as he and Ariadne came to rest, the play started.

He held out a hand in the space between them, waiting for her to clasp it. Ariadne didn’t notice. He bumped her arm, gently. Ariadne looked up, blinked twice, shot him a distracted smile, and let her eyes turn back to the stage.

Dionysus shoved his hands into his pockets.

He stared at the stage. Westmoreland was telling the king of Mortimer’s misfortune, and in a minute they’d hear of Hotspur and Archibald meeting at Holmedon, and …

Dionysus didn’t care.

He looked sidelong at Ariadne. Her eyes were ostensibly on the stage … but if Dionysus were to wave a hand in front of her face, he doubted she’d even see it.

He frowned.

Later, the actors and crew who had been present would shudder when they remembered this show, calling it “the one that Murphy’s Law bloody near murdered.” There’d be muttering about whether perhaps this play ought to join the Scottish play in the litany of Shakespeare’s cursed works. From the audience, there would be confusion, noises about asking for refunds, and heavy disappointment.

And Dionysus wouldn’t care about any of it. Because something was wrong – very wrong – with Ariadne.

And she wasn’t telling him what.

* * *

[1] Whose length had very possibly just doubled.

[2] Aziraphale was rather determined to find a way to get to know the Youngs better and introduce them to some _proper_ wine, because no one deserved to have what they were currently presumably drinking be the limit of their wine-horizons, but, well, other things were taking precedence at the moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
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> 
> Stay tuned for the next update on Saturday!


	7. You’re My Best Friend

By mutual consent Aziraphale and Crowley had gone to Crowley’s flat as soon as they had dropped Ariadne off. It had nothing to do with convenience or sensibility and everything to do with Crowley’s liquor supply having not been burned to ash and then restored by a well-meaning but hopelessly eleven-year-old Antichrist.

They’d not spoken in the car, and they’d barely spoken in the flat beyond the bare necessities to locate the alcohol and distribute it. Aziraphale thought that what they both needed was to be alone with their own thoughts for a while, but at the same time, being alone was not something either was prepared to face.

But that was all right. They could be together with their thoughts. Crowley’s flat had plenty of room for all of them.

“More whisky?” Crowley asked.

“No, thank you.”

Aziraphale glanced at the window. The sky was starting to darken.

They had both been thinking for a long time.

Aziraphale could not say what Crowley’s thoughts were; though he’d dropped his sunglasses on the table by the door, he might as well have left them on for all that Aziraphale could read his face. As for Aziraphale’s thoughts, they had gone around and around the same dizzying track so many times that he was sure he knew every last bend in the road.

Of course he was thinking about Ariadne. What else would he – would either of them – be thinking about? He’d gone over their conversation, such as it had been, so many times he could probably recite it from memory.

And the worst of it was, she’d barely said anything about herself! The only reason they even knew her surname was because she’d put it along with the rest of her contact information into Crowley’s mobile on the way to the theater. And she’d scribbled it on a scrap of paper from her purse when Aziraphale had admitted he didn’t have a mobile.

Not for the first time, he took the paper out and looked at it.

Ariadne’s handwriting was much like Hera’s, in the sense that it was very clear that the Roman alphabet was not her first alphabet and paper and pens were not her first writing implements. Besides that, there was little else the paper could tell him beyond what was written on it. The phone number was American, which matched her accent and some of the things she’d said.[1] The surname was Tavros, which … could mean anything, really. Aziraphale wasn’t even sure what language it came from. It looked vaguely Greek, but he was far more familiar with various flavors of classical Greek than anything they were speaking in Athens today.

Although perhaps it was related to _tauros_ , bull? That would make sense, especially since she’d been raised on Crete as an ostensible daughter of Minos …

Not that she’d said anything about that. Aziraphale was merely assuming. He was making a great many assumptions, which he supposed was a side effect of having very few facts to go on. The most personal information she’d divulged had been her wings. And, yes, while wings were quite personal, they had been the prelude to a question, not an answer.

Questions …

She must have so many questions. After thirty-eight hundred years of radio silence, they certainly owed her answers. He just hoped they would be worth a fraction of the wait.

Strange, too, how one of the very first questions she had asked – once they got past the _what_ and the _how_ , which were inevitable under the circumstances – had been about how he and Crowley felt about each other …

Aziraphale sighed, folded the paper up again, and put it back into his jacket pocket.

And looked at Crowley.

_When an angel and a demon love each other very, very much …_

He’d objected to the statement, but only because he recognized the flippancy and the formula.[2] Not because it was untrue. Crowley had even confirmed it when Ariadne had asked – not in so many words, but …

Well, _not in so many words_ was Crowley’s style, wasn’t it? There so very many ways to say what he was thinking without coming right out and saying it. Ways like _Yes, all right, I’ll do that one, my treat_ and _Little demonic miracle of my own_ and _I’ll give you a lift, anywhere you want to go_.

And once – a very _long_ time ago – _Angel, I think you’re about as capable of Falling as that ass over there is of flying._

How odd was it that Aziraphale’s reaction to that last one – or was it the first one? – had been the least prudent and had arguably been what had gotten them into at least part of this mess. But it was the only one he’d never found it in him to regret.

“Something on my face?”

Aziraphale jumped, literally. “I—I’m sorry—what?”

Crowley raised an eyebrow at him as he refilled his glass. “My face, angel. Only, you keep staring at it, makes me wonder if there’s something on there I ought to know about.”

“Oh—oh, no, it’s nothing like that. I just …”

Words died.

Crowley frowned and brought the tumbler to his lips. “Angel?”

It occurred to Aziraphale with a stomach-sinking sort of clarity that for all that Crowley had been extremely open about his feelings for centuries, Aziraphale had never really reciprocated. Not the way he ought to have.[3] And that … that simply wouldn’t do.

“I love you, Crowley.”

In hindsight, Aziraphale would realize that he could have timed that better. Even if the mess would later be miracled away, Crowley probably did not appreciate the whisky he’d just sipped exiting his corporation via his nose.

Not that he seemed to care much at the time. He slammed the tumbler down on the table, twisted around in a way a human spine probably wasn’t meant to, and stared at Aziraphale. Aziraphale had never seen those golden eyes look so open, so vulnerable, and yes, so shocked.

“… What?”

Aziraphale shrugged. He wouldn’t insult Crowley’s intelligence or feelings by saying something like _Surely you ought to have known_ or even _It’s true_. Instead, he told the truth. “You’ve been saying it to me for such a long time, my dear – I thought it was past time you got to—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish, for with the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it suddenness of a cobra strike, Crowley was on him. In his lap, long-fingered hands tangled in his hair, staring into his eyes like they held the secrets of existence.

Aziraphale tried to smile in return. He didn’t get very far, because Crowley’s lips were almost immediately, and—

It wasn’t Heaven. Aziraphale knew a damned sight too well what Heaven was like, and it wasn’t this. This was—this was a warm mug of cocoa and a good book, an endless lunch at the Ritz, racing through Central London at ninety miles an hour to the tune of some infernal bebop, feeding the ducks at St. James’s, laughing together over a fifth glass of wine, only somehow all at once, and _better_ , and—and—

—and Crowley was practically attacking his bow tie without even breaking the kiss, and that was perfectly fine because, one, they didn’t actually _need_ to breathe, so why stop kissing? Two, if Crowley managed to damage the bow tie, Aziraphale would just miracle it back together later. And three, which perhaps ought to have been two or even one, Aziraphale’s own hands were busy, catching hold of the lapels of Crowley’s jacket and torn between wanting to push the jacket off him or use it as leverage to pull him closer—

Really, details of wardrobe aside, this wasn’t so terribly different from the last time they had done this—

And _that_ reminded Aziraphale of _other_ things, which had rather the same effect on him as slamming the brakes on did on the Bentley.

Aziraphale pulled back. “Crowley—dear, wait just a moment—”

Crowley did not wait just a moment. He jerked backward as if he’d been burned. “Shit—shit, I’m sorry, angel—did I hurt you? No, wait, bless it, I went too fast, didn’t—”

“No!” Aziraphale had seen the gathering guilt in Crowley’s eyes and had no desire to watch it grow stronger. He took Crowley’s hands in his and smiled. “You didn’t go too fast. Not at all. It’s just …”

He took a deep breath. Actually, he was panting. When it came to times like this, the corporation truly had a mind of its own. “We really ought to lay down some ground rules before we both lose our heads. Again.”

“ _Ground_ rules—oh. _Oh_.”

As if his meaning wasn’t perfectly clear already, Aziraphale added, “I don’t think we’re in a position to be able to afford another Ariadne.”

“ _Heaven_ no. Can’t imagine what it would take to baby-proof this place.” Crowley waved a hand to indicate the flat, with all its angles and sharp corners. “And your bookshop is a deathtrap to anyone under six.”

Aziraphale chose not to argue with that, not least because he suspected Crowley may have had a point.

Crowley pushed a hand through his hair, which flopped back perfectly into place once he was done with it. “So. Ground rules. You were saying?”

“I think,” Aziraphale bit his lip, “I think as long as we ensure everything stays corporeal, we should be safe enough. At least … look, I’m not _entirely_ certain about the details about whether these corporations can, er, _breed_ , but I am fairly sure that given the current shapes we’re both in,” he gestured between his technically male-shaped corporation and Crowley’s also technically male-shaped corporation, “we shouldn’t be able to do it with each other.”

“Couldn’t hurt to make assurance doubly sure, either,” Crowley murmured. When Aziraphale shot him a confused look, he sighed. “ _Condoms_ , angel.”

“Oh. Right. Quite. Not a bad idea, that. Do you have some? I don’t think we should be miracling them up – seems a bit risky, using a miracle to prevent a miracle—”

Crowley snapped his fingers. A rather familiar-looking black cardboard box appeared on the table beside them. It still had the cellophane on it.

Aziraphale realized with a small prick of guilt that the box could have just as easily come from the corner chemist’s as, say, Crowley’s bedside table … and then the much larger part of him decided he didn’t care. “Perfect. Now, where were we?”

Crowley grinned. It was positively sinful, much like that thrill that snaked down Aziraphale’s spine. “I believe,” Crowley leaned closer to him, hands going back to the bow tie to slowly untie it, “I was about to use every one of my wiles and have my wicked way with you.”

Oh, _two_ could play at that game. Aziraphale’s hands went to Crowley’s snakeskin belt, and he had to bite back a smug smile of his own when Crowley’s eyes widened. “Is that so, dear? Because here I thought I was going to show you some of the tricks I picked up in that club off Portland Place while you were having a nap.”

Crowley scowled. “If you attempt to dance a gavotte in my bed, angel, I am throwing you out of it.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “Oh, darling, _do_ shut up.”

And then he made damn sure that Crowley did.

* * *

The traitors were still at the gray block of apartments in Mayfair when Mephistopheles and Samael were relieved. There was the usual volley of insults and supercilious sniffs as the new angel and new demon took their places. Mephistopheles didn’t bother to participate (Samael did enough participating for the both of them, and she was better at it), simply restrained himself to briefing Legion on what they ought to be looking for, and set off with Samael back toward Headquarters.

Well. Not _with_ Samael. Samael had taken one look at him, sneered, and crossed to the other side of the street. Mephistopheles made sure that Legion and the angel (whose name he hadn’t caught) could see him rolling his eyes before following in her wake.

They’d gone ten blocks and made three turns before Mephistopheles dared to cross the street again. “Well?” he asked.

Samael looked over her shoulder. Ran a hand through her shaggy gunmetal-gray hair. “How well do you know this maze of a city?”

“Well enough—why?”

“You think you can get us back to the place where the traitors dropped the redhead off?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Great.” Samael sighed. “Because I’m hopelessly fucking lost.”

“You could just …” Mephistopheles pointed up.

“No way. We start flying, and that’ll attract attention. From Upstairs _and_ Downstairs.”

“True …” Mephistopheles looked around, reconnoitering his surroundings, trying to map out the quickest way to get to the theater on the banks of the Thames. “Er. Would you mind going down?”

Samael raised an eyebrow.

“Taking the Underground. It’s a lot faster than walking.”

Samael let out a dry chuckle. “It’s fine. Lead the way.”

Mephistopheles did so, navigating them to the Bond Street station and puzzling out the routes until he found the one that would take them where they needed to go. He didn’t dare any demonic intervention to help things along. Samael seemed to understand, although the way she glared at the “No Smoking” signs made Mephistopheles sure she would have unleashed a very different sort of miracle on them, had the need for concealment been any less acute.

Finally they found their train, got on, were whisked through the streets, and got off again at the Southwark station. From there it was a brisk walk to the theater.

Mephistopheles felt a chill as he stood outside the wattle-and-daub building. He _liked_ these kinds of theaters. The first time he’d seen himself played on the stage had been at a theater very like this – and very close by, too, strangely enough.

But that wasn’t what gave him the chill. “Do you … feel that?” he asked.

“Yep,” Samael replied, popping the final “p.” She shoved her hands in her pockets.

It was late. The theater was empty and quiet. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of humans had passed through this space since they had watched the traitors drive the redhead here and leave her. None of their auras had left more than a whisper of a feeling to mark their passing. Most humans could _live_ in a space and not leave more than that. Some could – but it took personality on a level most humans just didn’t possess.

Creatures who _weren’t_ human, though, were a different story. Which was almost certainly why Samael had brought them back here.

He was fairly certain that she hadn’t expected to find _this_ , though. This wasn’t just beyond-human levels of personality. This was true Presence. Something had made this space just shy of sacred, and—

Mephistopheles hissed in a breath. “Shit!”

Samael glanced at him.

He _recognized_ this Presence.

“Shit,” Mephistopheles repeated. “Shit, shit, shit!”

“You mentioned.” Samael rolled her shoulders, and her right hand twitched like it was reaching for a sword. “What’s wrong?”

“This,” Mephistopheles found himself dropping his voice, even though nobody was around to hear them. “This isn’t just anyone, all right? It’s—it’s one of the _big_ ones. I know this—this person—he used to hang around here in, oh, it must have been the 1500s, 1600s, he was _always_ lurking around the playhouses—”

“Who?” Samael demanded.

“He—” Mephistopheles hesitated. He did not want to say the name out loud. In a space like this, a near-sacred one, to say the name aloud might attract his attention, and the last thing he wanted was to attract the attention of one of _them_. “Can I see your phone?”

Samael didn’t hesitate to hand it over. Mephistopheles quickly found the notes app and typed in a name.

Samael’s eyebrows rose when she saw it. “Well.”

“If—if _he’s_ involved with this …” Mephistopheles shuddered. “That means the _rest_ of them are too.”

“Or it could be coincidence,” Samael mused.

Mephistopheles goggled at her.

“What? It’s a _theater_.” She jerked a thumb toward the wooden O. “That’s his wheelhouse, isn’t it?”

For a moment Mephistopheles almost felt relief. She wasn’t wrong. And of that lot, well, this one was always one of the most content to live and let live, so to speak. As long as _his_ particular pets weren’t messed about with in a way that would cause their early demise—

Mephistopheles nearly choked and frantically shook his head. “No—no, he doesn’t—he’s not _here_ that often! In London! He spends most of his time in Los Angeles!”

Samael narrowed her eyes. “How do you know?”

“His aura’s all over the city. We can barely get anyone to do temptations out there.”[4]

“Huh,” Samael remarked. She put the phone back into her pocket, her hands following it. She tilted her head back, eyes closed, seeming to sniff the air.

She didn’t seem worried – but then again, she had less cause to worry. She was an archangel. If it came down to a fight, Samael could hold her own long enough to call for backup or escape. Mephistopheles, on the other hand, was just a minor demon with a bit of fame among the humans.

“He wasn’t happy,” she remarked, opening her eyes. “When he was here.”

“He … wasn’t?” Mephistopheles extended his senses, and … yes, he could see what she meant. Sort of. He caught glimpses of the feeling, but whenever he tried to pin it down and understand it better, it wriggled out of his grasp.

“It’s a love-based feeling,” Samael said.

“Oh,” Mephistopheles murmured. That explained why he couldn’t get a close read on it.

“Hmm.” Samael said nothing more as she circled the theater, craning her neck, listening with every single one of her senses. Mephistopheles could only follow in her wake, wondering what she felt.

After they’d made a complete circuit of the theater twice, Samael stopped and huffed. “Well, fuck me sideways.”

“Hmm?”

“ _His_ aura is too potent.” Samael waved to the theater. “If the redhead even left a trace here, there’s no way I’ll be able to find it.”

“Bless it,” Mephistopheles muttered. “So the trail’s gone cold on her.”

“… Maybe.” Samael tapped one finger against her chin. “If _him_ being here is a coincidence, then yes. But if it’s _not_ …”

Mephistopheles felt his eyes widen. “Could you trace him?”

Samael’s only response to this was a smile. “Fancy another walk?”

Mephistopheles chuckled. “Of course. After you.”

And with that, an angel and a demon headed back onto the streets of London, following the trail of a god.

* * *

Hera had not lied when she told the angel Aziraphale that she did not sleep. But sleep was not the same as rest. Even in the old days, when she had spent most of her days on the Olympian plane and only come to the mortal world when necessary,[5] she had made certain to spend a few hours of each day on her couch, relaxed and comfortable.

Even now, after nearly two millennia spent almost exclusively in the mortal world, Hera saw no reason to break that habit. Sleeping couches had gone out of style, but her bed in their London townhouse was more than comfortable. It was the perfect place to while away the quietest hours of the night with only a book or a journal article for company.

Or it would be, except Zeus had thrown open one half of the double doors without so much as a knock. “ _Hera_!”

Hera blinked. Zeus stood on the threshold, breathing through his nose like a bull, a tablet in one trembling hand. Clearly, this wasn’t a conjugal visit.

“Yes, dear?”

That was all the invitation Zeus needed to storm into the room, slamming the door behind him.

Hera pushed her reading glasses down her nose so she could glare over them.[6] “Whatever it is that has you upset, I’m sure there’s no need to take it out on the architecture.”

“ _This_ ,” Zeus replied, “ _this_ is what I get from listening to you!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“ _Look_!” he said, thrusting the tablet into her lap.

Hera carefully put the article she was reading to the side and took the tablet. She frowned at the grainy image before her. “What am I looking at?”

“CCTV footage from in front of the angel’s bookshop,” Zeus said, and hit play.

That was not nearly as helpful as Zeus seemed to think it was. Everything looked normal to her. The street was crowded with people; the demon’s car was parked in front of the bookshop; pedestrians were crossing the street with little care for life or limb—

_Oh._

One of them managed to teleport a vehicle around her. As if Hera hadn’t noticed the first time, the pedestrian did it again.

Hera squinted at the tablet, pushed her glasses up her head and squinted again. But it was no use. The image quality was too poor; Hera couldn’t make out any identifying features. And in no time, the pedestrian had disappeared into the bookshop.

She sighed and handed the tablet back to Zeus. “So some supernatural figure is visiting the angel. How is this my fault?”

Zeus scowled, took the tablet back and fiddled with it. Then he shoved it back at Hera. “Watch again.”

Ethereal filters. And what Zeus had wanted her to see was obvious, even before the first car teleported around the pedestrian for the second time.

After all, there was only one being in London – or, Hera suspected, the world – with gray wings.

“Huh,” Hera murmured.

“They found her!” Zeus exploded. “You gave them too much information, and they found her! And now they have what they want, and they owe us _nothing_!”

“Yes, that is unfortunate,” Hera murmured. She frowned at the tablet. Something … something Zeus had said didn’t sit quite right. Only she couldn’t quite—

“And now what?” Zeus continued ranting. “She was supposed to be our leverage! But if they’ve already found her, they don’t need us, and—”

“Wait,” Hera said, lifting one finger. “Please. I’m thinking.”

In past centuries, this would have only incensed Zeus. But they had come a long way. Now, though Zeus clenched his fists and took a deep breath, he let it out again slowly, and he said nothing further. Leaving Hera free to think in peace.

And she did. Furiously.

“Are we sure,” she asked finally, “that _they_ found _her_?” She looked up. “It seems to me to be equally likely that _she_ found _them_.”

Perhaps it was even more likely. All Hera had given the angel was a name and a photo. It would take quite a feat of sleuthing to use that to find Ariadne’s contact information – especially since Ariadne and Dionysus, thanks to their connection to mortal Hollywood and its celebrity culture, were even more careful about information security than most of the other gods were.[7] Whereas the angel, on the other hand …

Hera snapped her fingers, and after a few moments of inner scrambling, the tablet displayed one of the photos they had put into the PowerPoint – the one showing the angel, the demon, the car, and the bookshop. “Yes, I think it’s much more likely that she found them.” She turned the tablet around, one perfectly manicured nail resting on the screen right next to the painted letters reading A.Z. Fell & Co.

Zeus squinted, scowled, and cursed a blue streak that London’s meteorologists would have a very difficult time explaining come morning.

Hera shut off everything electronic in the room with a snap of her fingers and waited for Zeus to get that out of his system. When he seemed to be finished, she smiled at him. “Better?”

He sighed, and that was answer enough for Hera to snap her fingers again and turn the lights, tablet, etc. back on.

Zeus lowered himself to the bed and let his head flop against the pillow. “I gave _direct orders_.”

“I know,” Hera replied, patting his arm.

“And I never even expected _her_ to disobey! Out of all of them …”

Hera made a nonspecific noise of assent. She would grant Dionysus this much: once he’d come into his godhead, in many ways he’d been the least troublesome of Zeus’s children. He’d been so uninterested in Olympian power struggles that he hadn’t even bothered to take a side in the Trojan War. And Ariadne had always followed where he led … or more accurately, hidden in his shadow.

But perhaps that lovely mortal metaphor, _still waters run deep_ , held some truth to it after all.

“ _And_ ,” Zeus went on, his voice niggling its way back into Hera’s consciousness, “because that damn girl had to stage her little rebellion _now_ , we’ve lost our leverage—”

“Leverage?” Hera asked. “Wait. No. She was never leverage.”

Zeus opened his mouth—

“She was _bait_.”

Zeus’s eyes narrowed. Then they widened. He sat up on his elbows. “Hera …”

“And,” Hera tapped her finger against her chin a few times, thoughtful, “there’s no particular reason why she has to stop being bait.”

“What are you planning?” Zeus asked, voice threaded equally with caution and hope.

“It’s not so much planning as … not-planning. Realizing that not much needs to change about our plans. We might have lost this hand, but we haven’t lost the game yet.”

Hera set the tablet to the side. “In fact … if we’re _very_ clever about this … we might even be able to get more out of the angel and demon than we thought we would in the first place.”

Zeus’s eyebrows arched. “Tell me more.”

Hera smirked. And then she complied. 

* * *

[1] Like asking Crowley, as the Bentley climbed past ninety miles an hour, what the car had “under the hood” – which had confused Aziraphale to no end.

[2] While raising Warlock, he and Crowley had done some research on _the talk_ after realizing that, if their plans proved successful, the boy would need to know the facts of life … and that his parents would _absolutely_ botch the whole thing beyond repair. They’d thought they couldn’t possibly do worse than his parents. Sadly, they had not been wrong.

[3] If Aziraphale had been ready to be a little kinder to himself, he might have realized that statements like _They’ll destroy you_ and _I can’t have you risking your life_ and _Don’t go unscrewing the cap_ were every bit as open as anything Crowley had said. But beings that find it easy to be kind to others can sometimes find it very hard to be kind to themselves, and Aziraphale was no exception.

[4] Not that it made much of a difference to Hell’s recruitment numbers. When so much greed, lust, wrath, etc. were naturally swirling around a place, actual demonic temptations were at best the icing on the cake.

[5] To figure out what Zeus had gotten up to.

[6] As an immortal being, Hera did not suffer from age-related farsightedness and thus had no technical need for reading glasses. However, they did come in useful for a number of things, such as expressing one’s displeasure to one’s spouse.

[7] And given Hermes’s endless nagging on the subject and Hephaestus’s technical know-how, that was saying something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
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> Next update will be on Tuesday. See you then!


	8. Don't Stop Me Now

“Leaving already?”

They were not morning people. As the God of Wine, Dionysus had long believed that mornings were best when they didn’t start until after noon. Ariadne usually agreed with him, except for when they had an early-morning shoot to oversee.

Yet today they had – as far as Dionysus was aware – nowhere in particular to go, nobody in particular to see, nothing in particular to do. But Ariadne was up, dressed, and twisting her hair into a messy bun.

It wasn’t even nine yet.

Ariadne flashed him a distracted grin. “Hey, I’ve got stuff to do. I’ll be back by dinner, don’t worry.”

Dionysus crossed his arms over his bare chest (why bother to get dressed when reasonable people weren’t even out of bed at this hour?) and reached for his truth-encouraging power. “Like what?”

Ariadne wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Oh—stuff. Probably some shopping. Might pop into a bookstore; is there anything you want?”

Dionysus sighed. “No.” He didn’t even have the energy to snark about being able to buy any book he wanted himself. And like a spoiled, petulant child (and knowing it, which was worse), he huffed and looked to the side.

He didn’t look again at Ariadne, although he could hear the faint whisper of cloth and the scrape of nails on bobby pins as she finished her hair. He leaned against the doorpost and took deep breaths.

“Hey.”

Dionysus wouldn’t have looked up, but Ariadne’s hand on his cheek, tilting his face in her direction, didn’t give him much choice.

Her brows were knit, lips pulled down in a faint frown. “Look, I know I’m not being much fun this trip, but … come on, Dionysus. You can make your own fun. Nobody better.”

He snorted. “It’s not about fun.” He put one hand on her waist, lightly stroking with his thumb. “I just wish you’d tell me what was bothering you.”

Ariadne’s eyes clouded; she looked away. “Like I said,” she squeezed past him, “I’ll be back by dinner. Have a good day!”

He followed a few steps behind like an obedient puppy, but it was no use. Ariadne grabbed her purse and didn’t look back. And though she closed the door to their suite softly, in Dionysus’s mind it slammed like a dungeon door.

Dionysus waited a couple minutes, just in case she came back.

She didn’t.

He stomped to the bedroom, threw himself on the bed, and shouted into the pillow.

He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, trying to think his way out of this morass. All he knew was that it wasn’t long enough. Because his phone started ringing.

_Gods, NOW what?_ Dionysus groped for the phone and answered it without bothering to check the caller ID.[1] “What?”

“Dionysus! My favorite brother. My goodness, how wonderful it is to hear your voice!”

There was only one person who could do sarcasm that well. Also only one person who could called Dionysus his favorite brother and not be immediately known for a liar. Dionysus blinked. “Hermes?”

“The one and only.” Hermes sounded impossibly chipper for this hour, which … was Hermes all over. It wasn’t that Hermes was a morning person; it was that Hermes had yet to meet an hour of the day or night that he didn’t like. “You busy?”

Dionysus tried not to snort. “Not particularly. Why?”

“Great. We need to talk.”

A brisk rat-a-tat-tat sounded from the direction of the hallway … and from Dionysus’s phone.

Dionysus stared at the phone, uncomprehending, then glanced over his shoulder (not that he could see the door from here, but, still). _He didn’t._

All the same, he padded out to the door, opened it …

And there was Hermes, phone in one hand, travel mug in the other. “Morning, kid!”

Dionysus’s jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me?”

“Not yet!” Without waiting for an invitation, Hermes bustled inside. “Here—this is for you,” he said, thrusting the travel mug in Dionysus’s general direction.

“What—what is it?”

“Coffee. You’ll need it.” Hermes poked his head into the bedroom before heading into the sitting room. “Ariadne around?”

“No.” Dionysus tried not to sound put out about it. Hermes meant well, most of the time, but Dionysus wasn’t in the mood to have all his secrets badgered out of him.

What he wasn’t expecting was for Hermes to sigh heavily. “Well. Shit.” He looked over his shoulder. “Did she tell you where she was going?”

“No.” Once again, Dionysus did his best not to sound put out.

He must have messed it up. Hermes’s eyes narrowed, and he looked Dionysus up and down twice. “Right. Let’s try that again, shall we?”

“What?”

“God of Tricksters, remember?” Hermes gestured to himself. “You think you’re going to convince _me_ with that ‘no’?”

“Yes?” Dionysus answered. “I have no idea where she is.”

Hermes’s eyebrow slowly rose.

Dionysus closed his eyes and tilted his head back. If the god he trusted most hadn’t been standing right in front of him, he would have been praying for … something. Patience, maybe. “She didn’t tell me where she was going. Just that she’d be back by dinner.”

And Hermes … sighed?

“I was afraid of that,” he muttered and threw himself onto the couch. Then he looked at said couch, with its chintz fabric and overstuffed pillows and cushions. “Great Gaia, this thing is hideous.”

“Ariadne likes the Ritz,” Dionysus muttered, lowering himself onto the chair.

He was bracing himself for teasing, a click of the tongue like a whip-crack or a quip about turning into Uncle Hades in his old age. What he got was a scowl. “Of course she does.” Hermes nodded to the mug Dionysus was still holding. “You’d better drink that, kid. You’re gonna need it.”

Dionysus frowned, but he brought the mug to his lips and took a sip.

He nearly spat it across the room. “What the _fuck_ is that?”

“Irish coffee!” Hermes grinned. Then the grin fell off his face. “What, you don’t like it?”

Dionysus stared at the mug. “This is not an Irish coffee.”

“Sure it is! Death Wish Coffee with a dollop of Jameson whiskey. What else do you need?”

Dionysus barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes. “That’s not what Irish coffee—wait, did you say _death wish_?”

“Best coffee in the fucking world, kid.”

“I’ll pass,” Dionysus said, putting the mug down with a thunk. “So what are you doing here, anyway?”

Once again, Dionysus expected teasing, mostly about his taste (or lack thereof) in coffee. He didn’t get any. Hermes frowned again, burrowing into the sofa cushions, and looked … uncomfortable?[2]

“I, uh,” Hermes pulled at his collar, which strictly speaking shouldn’t have been necessary, since he was wearing a loose t-shirt. “Well. I actually came to warn you. Er, you and Ariadne, but—”

“Warn us?” Dionysus stared at his brother, jaw hanging. “Warn us about what?”

Hermes took his phone out again, probably so he’d have something to fiddle with. “So. There’s no easy way to say this, but—you remember the angel and the demon who stopped the Abrahamic assholes from ending the world?”

“Rings a bell,” Dionysus answered, wondering what this had to do with anything.

“And you remember how Pater said none of us were to go contacting any of the, uh, dramatis personae in that little clusterfuck?”

Dionysus’s stomach began to sink. “Yeah …”

Hermes rubbed the back of his neck. “So—the angel has a bookshop in Soho. There’s a coffee shop across the way that has CCTVs. I hacked into the cameras, and Hephaestus was reviewing the footage last night, and—he saw Ariadne walking into the bookshop.”

“ _What_?!”

For a minute, Dionysus allowed himself to imagine that maybe this was a coincidence. Ariadne liked to collect things; maybe she’d gone into the shop in Soho because it had something she wanted to buy—

“I take it she didn’t bother to tell you about her plans.”

“No, she didn’t—look, how do you even know it was Ariadne, anyway?” Dionysus asked, seeing a straw he could grasp at. “Security cameras aren’t exactly shooting in 4K—”

“Ethereal filters. Her wings are kinda a giveaway.”

_Oh, fuck._

“And, uh,” Hermes squirmed, “I did mention that Hephaestus found this first, didn’t I?”

Yes, he had, but Dionysus had no idea why—

His stomach plunged into his feet.

He realized why.

“… No,” Dionysus breathed.

“He doesn’t mess around with Pater, you know,” Hermes went on, looking at everything in the room that wasn’t Dionysus’s face. “So. Um. He went to Pater pretty much as soon as he found this—”

“ _SHIT_!” And Dionysus was on his feet, magicking his phone and his wallet into his hands, ready to run out the door and after Ariadne—

“Whoa!” Hermes was, as always, quicker on his feet. He had Dionysus’s elbow in a death grip that wasn’t likely to slacken soon. “And where do you think _you’re_ going, cowboy?”

“After Ari! Before Father has a chance to get to her!”

“Without even getting dressed? Come on, the days when we could appear to mortals half-naked are long gone.” Hermes didn’t even wait for Dionysus to magic some clothes on himself; he made a complicated gesture and Dionysus found himself clothed. “And where are you going to find her, eh?”

Dionysus scowled. “I … don’t suppose you have the address of the angel’s bookshop?”

Hermes’s response was to grin and tap his phone. Dionysus’s phone buzzed.

Dionysus didn’t even have to look at the phone to know what Hermes had sent. “Thanks,” he muttered to his feet.

“No problem, kid. Now run off and rescue your girlfriend.”

Dionysus flashed his brother a quick grin and was off.

Not before he heard Hermes’s voice following him – and felt a travel mug somehow, improbably, lodge himself into a pocket that really shouldn’t have been big enough for it. “And drink the fucking coffee! You’re gonna need all the caffeine you can get!”

* * *

Once Samael and Mephistopheles had left the theater, tracing the god’s Presence had not been easy. The god had left little dots of Presence like a trail of breadcrumbs around the city, but like actual breadcrumbs, they were liable to be kicked, stepped on, and eaten by birds. More than once Samael had guessed in which direction the god had headed next, discovered she was wrong, and retraced their steps back to where the trail had been strongest and guessed again.

Dawn was just starting to slice through the streets when Samael and Mephistopheles ended up outside a large gray stone building. Samael was no expert on human architecture, but something about it – the tall mansard roof, the weathered copper lions, the endless carved stone details – looked out of place here. But familiar. As if she’d seen buildings like that before, just not _here_. Still, the architectural incongruousness of the building wasn’t why she stopped.

She stopped because the Presence was practically throbbing here.

A sidelong glance at Mephistopheles proved that he felt the same thing.

It wasn’t as strong as it had been at the theater. But it was strong enough that the auras of the thousands of humans in the vicinity weren’t enough to mask it. This god either wanted to be broadcasting his location to everyone in a three-block radius … or he just didn’t care that he was.

Samael just wished she knew enough about him to determine which it was.

“So …” Mephistopheles began.

Samael raised an eyebrow at him.

“Now what?”

Samael leaned against a lamppost. “Up to you, I suppose. Personally, I’d like to hang around for a bit. See where he goes next.”

“Then we can stay,” Mephistopheles said, leaning on the other side of the lamppost.

“You sure?” Samael frowned at him. She didn’t mention it often – not much point – but she knew damn well the gulf of rank that lay between them. The only people who had any standing to question Samael’s decisions were other archangels or the Almighty Herself (which in practice, these days, meant the Metatron). The other archangels Samael could usually put off with a roll of the eyes or prickly comments, and the Metatron barely gave her the time of day. Mephistopheles, on the other hand …

Mephistopheles was, at best, the type of demon who reported to three different managers all with very different strategies and a constant need to have someone to blame when (not if) things went wrong. And if Hell were anything like Heaven,[3] then he could expect management to be looking over his shoulder even more than they had been previously. Nobody wanted to find out the hard way that traitorous thoughts were contagious.

And since spending time on Earth was what had led Crowley and Aziraphale down the primrose path of dalliance in the first place … Samael could only assume that Mephistopheles’s time topside would be even more severely curtailed than usual.

“Relax,” Mephistopheles said, smirking as if he could read her mind. “If anyone questions me, I’ll just say I was keeping an eye on you.” He held out a thumb to her, already lit. “Light?”

Samael chuckled, took out a cigarette, and settled in to wait.

They didn’t see anything of note for almost four hours. The building across the street grew a bit livelier, but that told Samael nothing. She read the names that flashed on the lighted boards over the doors – _Ritz Hotel_ , _Ritz Restaurant_ , _Ritz Club_ – but they also told her nothing.

In the time they watched, no fewer than three red-haired women left the building. They were all too far away for Samael to be sure if any of them was _the_ redhead, whose face she hadn’t seen clearly to begin with. And most disappointingly, none of them used any magic.

Closing in on the fourth hour, Samael _thought_ she felt something – a frisson, a flicker of another Presence – but it was gone too quickly for her to be sure that was what she had felt. A sidelong glance at Mephistopheles showed that he had felt it, too.

Samael stood up straight, unconsciously shifting into a battle-ready posture. Mephistopheles gulped and echoed her movements.

Not ten minutes after she’d felt the flicker, the Presence they’d been tracking started to move.

“Get ready,” Samael said, taking the cigarette from her mouth and grinding it under her heel before snapping it out of existence.

She didn’t say what for, and Mephistopheles didn’t ask.

_Wait for it … wait for it … there!_

Samael felt the minute the Presence was no longer shielded by the building, and it wasn’t hard to connect the moving Presence with the dark-haired young-looking man who ran out one of the large doors. He was waving a hand frantically – what for Samael couldn’t tell – perhaps some kind of magic? She didn’t feel anything, but she did see a black automobile not unlike the one driven by the demon Crowley slow to a stop long enough for the young man to dive into the backseat of it.

“Oh, _no_ ,” Mephistopheles groaned.

“Well, hopefully this one is a calmer driver than that Crowley,” Samael muttered, before snapping her fingers and blowing out the tires on a passing automobile.

The chase was on.

* * *

Crowley leaned against the bookshop counter, facing the door, and scowled.

He was aware that he should not be scowling. By virtually any definition, yesterday had been one of the best days of his life. First, they’d gotten back from the Underworld in one piece. Then Ariadne had waltzed into the bookshop and while, no, their reunion had been nothing like what certain treacly made-for-TV movies claimed it ought to have been,[4] _they had her back_ and that was what was important. And then, at his flat, Aziraphale had actually come out and said that he loved him (and not in an angelic way, either), and they had passed a thoroughly agreeable night. Which Crowley was hoping to repeat at the first opportunity.

And then – _and then_ – this morning, at an hour that could only barely be called decent, Crowley had been awakened by a text. From Ariadne. Asking if it would be _too much trouble_ if she came by the bookshop, because she still had questions.

No, Crowley was not scowling because things were going badly. He was scowling because they were going entirely too well, and if _that_ wasn’t a harbinger of disaster, nothing was.

“Crowley, dear,” that was Aziraphale, coming up behind him, “if you don’t move soon, I’m afraid I might mistake you for part of the furniture and dust _you_.”

Crowley took the hint and moved. Then he narrowed his eyes as Aziraphale carefully moved the feather duster along the counter. “Why are you dusting in here, anyway?”

“Er, well,” Aziraphale cleared his throat and didn’t meet Crowley’s eyes, “Ariadne is coming, and you did mention, last night, that this place was a—I believe the words you used were ‘deathtrap for anyone under six’—”

“Six _years_ , not six _feet_!”

“Yes, well …” Aziraphale paused in his dusting long enough to adjust the cuffs of his jacket and straighten his bow tie. “I would like things to look nice.”

“Oh.” Crowley realized he had no answer to that and so, wisely, chose to stay silent.

Or so he thought. Apparently that was so out of character for him that it pinged some concern on Aziraphale’s part. “Everything all right, my dear?” Aziraphale asked, putting a hand lightly on his upper arm.

And rubbing it. With his thumb. Even through the stiff fabric of the jacket, Crowley could still feel the faint trail of warmth.

Crowley swallowed hard, and his corporation’s heart – always a pain in the arse, really – decided that now would be a grand time to skip a beat—

And before he could follow that train of thought to a station that might be rather nice, the shop-bell rang and in walked Ariadne.

The first thing Crowley noticed was that she was wearing oversized sunglasses, which, if _that_ wasn’t a sucker-punch to the gut, very little would be. The second thing he noticed was the way her smile seemed to shake. The third thing he noticed was the brown paper bag in one of her hands.

“… Hi,” she said. She held the bag up. “I come bearing gifts?”

She looked just like Aziraphale as she said it – the unnaturally still posture, that flickering smile, the eager-to-please fairly dripping off her—

_She’s nervous. So nervous. Why is she nervous?_

“Oh, how thoughtful of you, my dear!” That was Aziraphale, thankfully bustling forward with a smile and giving Crowley a couple of seconds to remember how to act like a person. “But you didn’t have to bring anything.”

“Nah, it was no trouble – I was in the coffee shop already,” she gestured to the shop-window and presumably the coffee shop across the street with her other hand, which held a plastic cup filled with an iced drink, “so, you know, I figured, I might as well pick up some food. Um, I hope you like scones?”

Crowley couldn’t help what came next. It was a demonic compulsion. He’d swear it with Go—Sa—Somebody as his witness. “It’s pronounced _scone_ , by the way. Rhymes with ‘gone.’ Not ‘cone.’”

Aziraphale, who was already halfway into unpacking the bag, stopped. And glared.

Crowley grinned.

“Ignore him, dear,” Aziraphale said, turning back to Ariadne. “He knows not of what he speaks.”

“As if you wouldn’t have corrected her if she’d said it the other way,” Crowley replied, leaning against the counter and finally feeling some of the tension he’d been carrying around begin to unwind.

“I would _not_ have,” Aziraphale replied, still unpacking scones (however one chose to pronounce them). “Unlike you, I have manners.”

Somewhere in all this, Ariadne had pushed the sunglasses to the top of her head, so Crowley was able to see the way her gaze flicked between him and Aziraphale. A smile teased at the corner of her lips. But all she said was, “Nice thing about having an American accent on this side of the pond – nobody expects you to pronounce anything correctly.”

“American … accent?” asked Aziraphale, beating Crowley to it.

“Oh come on,” Ariadne laughed, “you have to have heard it. I’m pretty proud of it. Around here, it gets me everything from the side-eye to the, ‘ _Oh, you sound just like those Americans on telly_!’”

Crowley blinked. He had to hand it to her; the English accent she slid into for that last bit was pretty good. But it was also old. Even Aziraphale hadn’t spoken quite like that for at least fifty years – which meant that the rest of England had abandoned that intonation a century beforehand.

_Interesting._

“So, you don’t think of yourself as American?” Aziraphale asked.

Ariadne tilted her head slightly to the side. “Do you guys think of yourselves as British?”

“English,” Crowley corrected, “there’s a difference.”

Ariadne’s only response was to raise her eyebrows and take a far-too-innocent looking sip of her drink.

“We _did_ arrive not long after the Angles, didn’t we?” Aziraphale asked, glancing at Crowley. “I mean, we were both fomenting around Wessex in – oh, goodness, what year was it?”

“Five hundred and …” Crowley tried to remember, gave up, and shrugged. “Something-or-other.”

Ariadne blinked. “And you’ve been here ever since?”

“Oh, no! Well, not really. We’ve both had to move around quite a bit – blessings and temptations, you know, orders from our Head Offices to go here, there, and everywhere.”

Crowley could see, quite clearly, that Ariadne didn’t know. “He means Heaven,” he pointed to Aziraphale, “and Hell,” he pointed at himself.

“Oh,” Ariadne murmured.

“But England’s been, well, _home_ for a while,” Aziraphale went on. “I’ve owned this shop for, goodness, it must be over two hundred years now.”

He made the mistake of saying that while Ariadne was sipping from her drink – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Ariadne made the mistake of drinking while he was talking. There was a gasp, a gurgle, and a great deal of coughing.

“Oh—oh, my!” Aziraphale put a hand on her shoulder, clearly seconds from whacking her on the back. “Are you all right?”

She nodded, still coughing. “Yeah—yeah, fine.”

Crowley limited himself to a wince in sympathy. Even when one didn’t need to breathe, fluid in the lungs was never a pleasant feeling.

“Two—two hundred years?” she asked. “You’ve both lived here for two hundred years?”

“Er …” Aziraphale glanced sidelong at Crowley. “Well, I’ve had the shop for two hundred years … I’ve been in London since … how long _has_ it been?”

“Since the printing press washed up in England, at least,” Crowley replied. “Fourteen something-or-other. Not counting, er, business trips elsewhere.”

“Wow,” Ariadne murmured. She glanced down, absently jiggling her drink. “We’ve been in LA for a century – I thought that was long.”

Crowley just barely raised an eyebrow. _We?_ He caught Aziraphale’s eye.

Aziraphale had heard the same thing he did; that was obvious. But when he felt Crowley’s gaze on him, he slowly, subtly shook his head.

Yeah, best not to scare her off. And perhaps it was only fair that she got to ask her questions first.

“Anyway!” Aziraphale said, and Crowley recognized that tone – the too-brightness, the cheerfulness tossed over his real feelings like a dust cover over furniture. “Shall we have a seat, my dear? After all, you said you had questions – and we really ought to enjoy this food you were kind enough to bring along.”

Aziraphale’s hand moved from her shoulder to the small of her back, guiding her gently but inexorably forward. Crowley saw her startle at the touch and hoped she wasn’t taking it too – badly? Personally? Aziraphale was like that with _everyone_ ; if he had the slightest hint of positive feelings toward someone, they’d soon be “touched by an angel” in almost every sense of the word.[5]

But whatever Ariadne might have been feeling, she went along with Aziraphale easily enough. Crowley grabbed the bag of scones (and other assorted baked goods; he checked) and sauntered after them.

After they were seated, baked goods distributed more-or-less equitably among the three of them, it didn’t escape Crowley that Ariadne found her way back to the wingback chair she’d sat in the day before, leaving him and Aziraphale to share the sofa. Which he didn’t _mind_ , not in the slightest, but it was an interesting choice.

It was also interesting that Ariadne, for all that she’d asked to come over, seemed to have a hard time asking the questions that all three of them knew she had. She kept passing her drink (which, Crowley noticed, had condensation all over it but didn’t let a drip of water drop) from hand to hand, taking nervous sips, listening to Aziraphale chat enough for the three of them, but not actually coming out and saying anything.

At least until she took a deep breath, dug into her purse, and pulled out her phone. “Ok, so. I, um. Had questions.” She waved her phone. “I wrote them down – so to speak – I hope that isn’t too weird?”

“Not at all, not at all,” Aziraphale said, and it was a blessed good thing that reassurance was second nature to him, because Crowley certainly wouldn’t have had it in him.

“Great. Awesome. Um.” Ariadne had tapped a few times on the screen, and now she was clearly scrolling through something. “There are … quite a few here.”

“So begin at the beginning,” Crowley said, even though it was a stupid thing to say, because somebody had to say something.

Ariadne looked up, eyes wide and lips slightly parted – like he’d touched a chord there. He heard her gulp.

“What—what was the beginning?” she asked. “For me, anyway. I mean, how did you two,” she gestured to them, “make …?” She gestured to herself.

Aziraphale took a deep breath—

“I mean, I don’t need all the gory details,” she stumbled on. “Just—just the gist. If that’s ok.”

“No, no, that’s quite all right, my dear,” Aziraphale replied. “And, well, er …” Aziraphale took a deep breath, and Crowley held his. “How … familiar are you with the story of Abraham and Isaac and the ram?”

Well. At least the angel wasn’t going all the way back to Eden.

But going back that far was enough to take up some time, especially since Aziraphale felt the need to explain, not quite _everything_ , but … quite a bit. And Crowley let him, barring the occasional interruption for clarity’s sake or to cut a tangent short. Because Aziraphale, the angel who had been collecting scrolls and tablets ever since humans had first learned how to pick up a sharp _something_ and etch their thoughts into the world around them, was better at this than he was. While Aziraphale had been collecting stories, Crowley had been asking questions and making arguments.

Ariadne, however, didn’t seem to mind. Not how long it took or how many tangents Aziraphale went off on. Her eyes were round, wide as saucers; her phone was at some point dropped into her purse and the drink deposited on a table without so much as a second look.

At least until Aziraphale got to the end, bringing her to Crete and walking away. “And …” Aziraphale had to take a deep breath, and something about the way it caught told Crowley that if it weren’t for however-many-centuries of English stiff upper lip bearing him up, the angel would be sobbing by now.

Crowley couldn’t be having with that. He edged over so his knee was touching Aziraphale’s and took Aziraphale’s hand in his. Aziraphale clung to it and took another deep breath.

“My dear,” he said, “forgive me for asking this, but were you—that is, did we—did _I_ do right by you? That is, were you happy?”

For the first time since Aziraphale had started talking, Ariadne didn’t look rapt. Instead, she visibly started, blinked, and tilted her head to one side. “I—I—maybe? Kind of? I mean – I always had a roof over my head, always had enough to eat, got a fairly decent education given the time and place, and my—my family was … well, look, it could have been worse, is all I’m saying.”

She looked away, picked at a loose thread on her skirt. “Could have been a _lot_ worse,” she muttered at the sort of volume that wasn’t meant to be heard.

That … was not a ringing endorsement of her upbringing. And to judge by the way Aziraphale’s pressure on his hand increased tenfold, it was probably not what Aziraphale had wanted to hear.

Crowley took a deep breath, pondering how best to tempt a little more information out of her—

Not that it did him any good. Because the door to the shop slammed open – the bell didn’t stand a chance – and a panic-fueled Presence barreled into Crowley’s other senses with a force that was nearly physical and nearly enough to knock him arse over elbow—

And following the Presence, a voice, crying out a name:

“ _ARIADNE_!”

* * *

Mephistopheles nearly groaned when the black car they were tailing pulled up in front of the bookshop. Of _course_ it did. Where else could it possibly have been going?

“Stop The Car, Now,” Samael ordered the driver of their vehicle.

Even as the brakes squealed and the vehicle rocked to a halt and Mephistopheles miracled away three potential crashes, he grabbed Samael’s wrist. “Wait!”

Samael raised an eyebrow at him.

“Are we sure we want to get out here? I mean … this place is still being watched by our sides, right?”

Samael’s nostrils flared; her eyes narrowed. Then she sighed. “Then we haven’t got a choice. Upstairs and Downstairs will know about,” she jerked her head toward the bookshop, “ _that_ in about five minutes. We need to talk to the agents on the ground if we want to keep any control over the situation.”

“And tell them what?”

Samael scowled. “The truth, for starters, or at least the parts of it that we can afford to let slip. And after that …” She shrugged. “We’ll see.”

With that, she ducked out of the vehicle, and Mephistopheles had little choice but to snap away oncoming traffic and follow her.

They didn’t have to look hard to find the angel and demon tailing the traitors – Mephistopheles had barely gotten out of the car when he heard a high, fluting voice call, “Archangel Samael! Ma’am! Over here!”

He scanned the busy street—and there she was. A be-suited angel, jumping up and down and waving.

About ten feet away, in the next darkened doorway down, lurked Legion – ratty scarf, fingerless gloves, strange eye-makeup and all. Or at least one of Legion. Maybe even the main one. They[6] grinned when they saw Mephistopheles. “Ah, Mephistopheles!”

“Legion,” Mephistopheles replied, hurrying across the street and trying not to look worried. Even though he was. Legion had relieved Mephistopheles, but the angel Samael was talking to hadn’t relieved her. What was going on?

“Can you believe,” Legion said, beckoning Mephistopheles into their corner, “that Heaven sent a bloody intern to keep an eye on the traitors?”

“They _what?!_ ” yelped Samael, who seemed to be finding this out from said intern. Mephistopheles spared a glance at the intern to find her cowering, and he felt a flicker of pity.

“Satan’s hairy balls,” Mephistopheles muttered, which made Legion chuckle. “What’d they think the intern would do if she had to tail the demon Crowley by herself?”

“Blessed if we know,” Legion said, twisting their body to lean against the doorpost (and tilting their head so their hair-horns weren’t bent out of shape). “Speaking of blessed things – what are you doing, riding around with an archangel?”

Mephistopheles tried not to make it obvious that his blood ran cold at the question. “Keeping an eye on her, obviously. We encountered something … interesting when we were tailing the traitors, and she wanted to see if she could find out more about it.”

Legion stood up straight. “Wait. You don’t mean that—that god that just ran into the bookshop?”

Was there any point denying it? Actually, yes, there was. He wouldn’t be believed, but there was still a point in playing the game. So Mephistopheles raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow. “What god?”

“Whoa,” Legion murmured, which was about what Mephistopheles had expected. “Do you know who he was? He _felt_ familiar, but—”

“Oi! Demons!” That was Samael. “Get over here a minute, will you?”

“Says fucking who?” Legion challenged.

“The Archangel fucking Samael,” Samael replied (the intern blanching at the language), “who’s got the Archangel fucking Michael on speed dial, who has the Duke fucking Hastur on speed dial. Now come here!”

Legion’s eyebrow arched, and they remarked to Mephistopheles – loud enough to be heard – “Never knew a duke who would fuck Hastur.” But Legion strolled forward. Considering how often Hastur incinerated, dismembered, fed to hellhounds, and otherwise disposed of Legion’s personae, Mephistopheles wasn’t surprised that the threat worked.

“Yeah?” Legion asked, throwing their hands into their pockets and leering at Samael. Mephistopheles found himself praying to Satan that Samael wouldn’t notice.

“She says,” Samael nodded at the intern, “that a blond—”

“R-r-r-redhead, ma’am,” the intern squeaked.

“Whatever. Young woman, red hair, went into the shop about …” Samael raised an eyebrow at the intern.

“Half an hour ago, ma’am. Not long after I arrived.”

Samael didn’t do anything as obvious as look at Mephistopheles, but he caught her drift anyway. He shoved every reaction that threatened to bubble up back down.

“Right.” Samael turned back to Legion. “Did anyone else go into the shop before she got here?”

Legion shrugged. “How should we know? It’s a shop. Humans are supposed to be going in and out. _We’re_ just looking out for the angel.”

Samael narrowed her eyes at Legion. Then she smirked. “I’ll take that as a no, then.”

“We didn’t say—”

“Or that you’re too stupid to have noticed if they did.” Samael put one hand on her hip and looked Legion over twice. Her amused smile said exactly what she thought of the demon. “Which is it?”

Now Legion scowled. “It’s a no.”

“Good. Right. Well, I don’t know how thoroughly you were briefed – but since the only reason we’re doing this is because those two,” she nodded at the bookstore, “went off-plane, clearly to parlay with _somebody_ , and now they’ve got a bona fide _god_ in their shop …” Samael pulled her cel-phone from her pocket. “We need to alert Headquarters.”

_What? NO!_ That was the last thing they wanted! If Headquarters got involved—

Samael caught his eye for a fraction of a second, and Mephistopheles understood. He opened his mouth—

And never got a chance to say anything. “Oh, you’re going to call in a bunch of archangels and take all the bloomin’ credit? Not bloody likely,” Legion scoffed.

“And do you have a better idea?” Samael asked.

“Why not do it ourselves?”

The intern gasped. Mephistopheles felt his eyes go wide of their own volition.

But Samael?

She looked Legion up and down. And she _laughed_.

“Right. Right. Like _you’d_ stand a chance against a literal god. Do you even know who’s in there?”

“Do _you_?” Legion tossed back.

As an answer, Samael smirked, tapped on her cel-phone, and turned it around. Mephistopheles saw the note he’d written in there with the god’s name.

The intern squealed. Mephistopheles didn’t bother to hold back the shudder. But Legion …

Legion tilted their head a little to one side. “Huh. Well, we can still use some firmament to blow a hole in him, can’t we?”

Mephistopheles’s brain stuttered on that, even as Samael’s face when sent slack and she demanded, “What.”

“’Cause we brought this,” Legion said, lifting up their jacket and pulling out what looked like a handgun.

It wasn’t a handgun. Maybe humans would be fooled by the appearance, but no ethereal or occult being would be. What Legion was holding was firmament – the boundary, the energy that separated the physical plane from the ethereal plane – that had been twisted into a weapon. Firmament had been the material both sides had used to make weapons in the war, the first war, the big one, the one before time began, before Heaven was Heaven and Hell was Hell. And they’d used it to make just about every kind of weapon that would eventually be known to man. Weapons that humans would eventually call _shields_ and _swords_ and _staves_ and things like that, but which the infernal and celestial armies had called _Sloth_ (or _Fortitude_ , according to the other side) and _Wrath_ (or _Justice_ ) and _Pride_ (or _Faith_ ), respectively.

Both sides had largely stopped using firmament-weapons once Holy Water and Hellfire came on the scene. But they still kept the old weapons around. And made upgrades. Just in case.

“Archangel S-Samael,” the intern stammered, “why is a d-demon carrying Hope?”

Legion glared. “This isn’t Hope; it’s Envy.”

“Small,” the intern said, gesturing to the not-handgun. “P-portable. Evens the odds when your opponent is b-bigger and s-stronger and b-better than you. Hope.”

“Small. Portable. A consolation prize for all those times when your enemy is bigger and stronger and better than you. _Envy_ ,” Legion fired back.[7]

Samael threw her head back and groaned. “ _Semantics_! It doesn’t matter!”

“So you want one, then?” Legion asked.

Samael blinked. “What?”

“Small. Portable. Will probably take a chunk out of a god. Will _definitely_ blow a few holes through the demon that swam in Holy Water and the angel that walked through Hellfire. We could end this now,” Legion said, grinning.

Mephistopheles’s jaw fell. Even with firmament, which probably _would_ do some damage to the traitors (probably), there was no way two minor demons and an intern angel could take out a god, even with an archangel on their side. This was an unmitigated disaster waiting to happen—

—Which was exactly what they wanted.

Mephistopheles glanced sidelong at Samael to see her coming to that same realization.

“We could indeed end this now,” Samael said.

Legion grinned. And split. Now there were four Legions, three holding out their handguns to Samael, Mephistopheles, and the intern.

“Then let’s do this,” Legion said in quadruplicate. 

* * *

[1] If this was some godsdamn telemarketer or scam, Dionysus was going to curse them with horrific hangovers for the next year.

[2] It couldn’t be the sofa. Whatever one might think about how Ritz sofas looked, they were very good at their primary job, i.e., providing a comfortable place to sit.

[3] Spoiler: It was.

[4] Crowley had not invented the made-for-TV movie, but he had insinuated to Hell that Aziraphale had, and he had thoroughly enjoyed the angel’s puzzlement when the latter got a letter from Gabriel praising him for his excellent work and most becoming modesty.

[5] “Almost” being the operative word here.

[6] Given that Legion was, well, _legion_ , they were always quite insistent on using plural pronouns. Gender was negotiable; number was not.

[7] Not literally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
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> Next update is coming your way on Thursday!


	9. Machine of a Dream

Ariadne and the young man[1] had been arguing for quite five minutes. This did not bother Aziraphale too much. What did bother him was the fact that they were doing it in what sounded like a flavor of Greek that had gone out of fashion centuries ago. Possibly millennia ago. And they were doing it very quickly, sentences spit out in staccato bursts more like machine gun fire than rational conversation. As a result, Aziraphale was lucky if he understood one word in ten.

Their body language was not terribly instructive, either. The quick hand motions, Ariadne’s set shoulders, the young man’s pacing like a caged cat – they all spoke to anger, stubbornness, worry. But not what each was angry, stubborn, or worried _about_.

And Aziraphale had a terrible, terrible premonition that he and Crowley might be at the heart of it.

He glanced up at Crowley, who was watching the arguing couple with scrunched eyebrows and a lean that looked nonchalant without managing to fool Aziraphale for a second. Crowley had always been better at spoken languages. “Can you understand what they’re saying?”

“Mmmph,” said Crowley with a shrug. “Trying to. But they’re speaking a weird dialect. Olympian, I think.”

“When you say Olympian …”

“I don’t mean what the humans near a certain pile of rocks in Thessaly were speaking.”

_Oh … dear._ Aziraphale took a deep breath, especially as the argument reached a crescendo. “You might wish to step back a few feet, dear. Get upwind of this. So to speak.”

Crowley’s eyebrow arched; then he understood and took a full two steps back. And shuffled directly behind Aziraphale for good measure.

Aziraphale took another breath, closed his eyes, and stretched his neck muscles. He reached deep inside himself for the Love that made him who he was. And then he let it out.

What it _should_ have done was produce a feeling of calm and repose in the bookshop. There were few beings who could withstand an overwhelming outpouring of Peace on Earth and Goodwill Toward Men[2] without calming down at least a little.[3]

Unfortunately, it seemed the young man was one of them.

“What in Tartarus’s name was _that_?” he shouted, thankfully in English, whirling to face Aziraphale.

Aziraphale had no chance to reply. First, because he felt Crowley’s hand on his arm and knew that the odds of Crowley doing or saying something slightly foolish were distressingly high. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, because Ariadne planted herself like a tree between Aziraphale and the young man, hands on hips, craning her neck to look at him. “Don’t. You. Dare.”

“Ari—”

“No! You want to shout at me for not listening to your pain-in-the-ass father, then shout at me! Leave them out of it!”

For a minute there was stalemate, young man staring at Ariadne and Ariadne glaring back at him. The young man was the first to blink, physically and metaphorically, his entire posture seeming to deflate.

“But _why_?” he asked, and even his Presence banked down, becoming something less than an all-out assault on the senses that went beyond the human five.

With that release of pressure, Aziraphale felt other presences. Familiar-seeming presences. And if he could sense them here in the protective cocoon of the shop and with the great press of humanity outside the shop—

Crowley made a strangled sort of noise. “We need to go,” he said. “We need to go _now_.”

“What?” asked the young man.

“No time to explain,” Aziraphale said, closing the distance between himself and Ariadne, ready to grab her and run for the door if he had to. (Crowley would follow.) “Please, just—”

“Leaving so soon?”

Aziraphale’s breath hitched in his throat. He _knew_ that voice—

Slowly, he turned around and saw who was emerging from the back room of the shop (how?).

Samael.

He hadn’t seen her in centuries, but she wasn’t hard to recognize. Same gunmetal gray hair, cropped short; same stormy eyes and olive-toned skin. Same just-this-side-of-furious expression. The only change was that she’d ditched the robes for the light-colored modern business wear preferred by most angels.

Next to her was another angel. Aziraphale didn’t recognize her, but since she wore the scared-stiff expression endemic to interns in over their heads everywhere, he supposed he didn’t really need to.

“Samael,” Aziraphale heard himself say. “What a—surprise.”

“But is it really?” came a voice from behind him, and Aziraphale whirled to face the door once again.

Two other figures blocked the exit. Both demons. Both familiar-looking in a way that Aziraphale couldn’t place. Well, not so much for the one on the right. _He_ had the face that Anglophone culture had ascribed to demons in general for at least four hundred years, all sharp, saturnine angles and slicked-back black hair. The other – Aziraphale knew he _ought_ to know him, felt familiarity ringing a bell, but he couldn’t quite remember—

Then Crowley growled, “ _Legion_ ,” stepping around Aziraphale to get closer to the demons, and Aziraphale remembered. Legion was the demon who had brought the Hellfire to “his” would-be execution in Heaven; Crowley had described him well but Aziraphale had never seen him—

“Hullo, Crowley.” Legion smiled, and on anyone else it might have even been a pleasant one. “Making new friends, we see? Not enough to be sleeping with enemy, you have to go dragging the neighbors into it?”

“Did you really think we wouldn’t find out?” Samael added. “First, you go off-plane, now you’ve invited the God of Wine to tea—”

_God of WINE?_ Aziraphale thought, and something that he should have remembered _much_ earlier began to jump up and down and demand his attention.

The so-named god was watching Samael with what Aziraphale could only interpret as contempt. “Look, whoever you are and whatever you think is happening here – I hate to break it to you, but you’re wrong. And we,” he put a hand on Ariadne’s shoulder, “are _leaving_.”

Ariadne glanced sharply at the god.

“Oh, we don’t think so,” Legion said, and pulled something that looked like a handgun out of his pocket.

It was not a handgun.

“And _that’sss_ enough—” Crowley said, or started to say.

“No, it isn’t.” Samael again—and when Aziraphale’s gaze whipped to her, she was holding a not-handgun too. So was the intern. “What you’re going to do,” Samael continued, “is keep your hands where we can see them, not make any sudden movements, and—”

The shop floor rumbled.

And the god spoke.

“No.”

Aziraphale blinked, because the god was changing. His plain green t-shirt became longer, more like a tunic, a subtle and then not-so-subtle pattern of leopard spots emerging. Vines leaves appeared in his hair, a bunch of grapes behind one ear. And his eyes, which Aziraphale would have sworn were brown mere moments ago, shifted to a rich burgundy.

The shop floor rumbled again, and a few enterprising green shoots slithered up through the cracks between the floorboards.

“This is not a battle you can win,” said the god. “But if you put those things down now, I might let you survive it. We. Are. _Leaving._ ”

That was when several things happened at once, or in such quick succession that they might as well have happened at once, except that time seemed to slow down so they could all have their turns.

The first was a series of pops as Legion after Legion sprang up between shelves and lounging by tables, each with an identical gleam in his eye and each holding an identical not-handgun.

The second was the intern shouting, “I don’t think so!” raising her not-gun and firing.

The third was Aziraphale realizing that the intern had no aim whatsoever and that the trajectory of the not-bullet wouldn’t bring it close to the god.

The fourth was Aziraphale realizing where the not-bullet was heading.

The fifth was Crowley – faster and closer – shouting, “No!” as he realized the same thing, lunging at Ariadne and tackling her to the ground.

The sixth was Crowley yelling as the not-bullet didn’t hit Ariadne.

And the seventh was all holy hell breaking loose.

* * *

If Ariadne had been mortal, her head would have hit the floor with enough force to make her see stars. As it was, she had bigger things to worry about.

Like Crowley, half sprawled on top of her, with a hole in his shoulder leaking blood.

And the forest of grapevines bursting from the shop floor and surrounding them.

And Aziraphale’s anguished, “ _Crowley_!” as he dove to the floor and the demon.

And the endless _bang-bang-bang_ of many, many cartridges emptying at once.

But her biggest problem by far was the vines that crept under her arms and around her chest, lifting her up, dragging her back—

“Damn it, Dionysus! _No_!” If she wasn’t still half-under Crowley, she would have started kicking. But the yelling did the trick; the vines loosened, and Ariadne wiggled out.

There were snapping, whipping sounds all around her, shouts that didn’t belong to Dionysus and clearly weren’t coming from Aziraphale or Crowley. Good, the grapevines were doing their thing. Ariadne crawled closer to Aziraphale and Crowley.

She’d thought they weren’t shouting. That wasn’t true. Or rather it changed. Aziraphale had his hand hovering over Crowley’s shoulder; the hand was glowing; and then Crowley _howled_ —

“ _Fuck_!” Aziraphale shouted, and the single syllable spoke volumes.

And then he acted. He dragged Crowley into a sitting position, leaning against the shop counter, wrestled himself out of his jacket, and wrapped it as well as he could around the wound.

“That’sss—” Crowley started – and then yelled again as Aziraphale pressed down on the wound.

“Sorry, dear boy, but we have to—” He was cut off by a whizzing sound and a _thunk_ as a bullet buried itself in the wood of the counter, inches from Aziraphale’s head.

_Oh. Fuck._ “Dionysus!” Ariadne shouted.

“ _Stay down_!” There—there he was, not far from where he’d been. Still on his feet, directing the vines like a conductor directing an orchestra. “There’s too fucking _many_ of them!”

_Many of who? There were only—_

“Well, _hello_ , pretty one.”

Ariadne looked up. The creepy goth one – Legion? Was that what Crowley had called him? – was standing over her.

And pointing the gun at her chest.

And leering.

“Won’t you like to come with us?” he crooned. “Not that you’ll have much of a choice. But if you’re very good and come quietly, we might not shoot you.”

That was when Ariadne got angry.

It was no garden-variety frustration or frothing rage. Instead it was white-hot, incandescent. This anger sang, stood its ground and stared injustice in the face and snarled, _Not. Today._

Because she hadn’t come this far, searched for so many centuries, finally found the species and the people she’d been looking for, only to have some Xerox goblin point a gun at her and tell her to _come quietly_.

The air around her crackled with an energy that wasn’t electricity – something older, deeper, more powerful. Her skin began to glow.

From the corner of her eye, Ariadne saw Crowley’s jaw fall – and in the same moment, Aziraphale threw himself over Crowley, his wings springing from his back and completely shielding Crowley from view.

Meanwhile, Legion was staring at her, face slack, gun held loosely—

“ _FUCK OFF_!” Ariadne shouted, and let the anger loose.

A jet of white light shot out from her, hit Legion square in the chest—and Legion wasn’t there anymore.

And for a minute, there was silence.

But only for a minute. It was broken by Crowley trying to push Aziraphale off him. “ _Come on_! We need to _go_!” And he tried to get up, but his legs didn’t seem to be working—

Aziraphale slung Crowley’s good arm over his shoulder and hauled them both to their feet. Crowley sagged as he tried to get his legs underneath him.

Then someone grabbed Ariadne by the shoulders—Ariadne screamed—

“Ari, calm down! It’s me!”

And from another corner of the room, Ariadne heard Legion shouting, “Hey! She _smote_ us!”

They needed to go.

Ariadne stumbled to her feet, checked to make sure Aziraphale and Crowley were following, and ran for the door.

The four of them spilled into the busy Soho street, first Ariadne, then Dionysus, then Aziraphale and Crowley. Vines burst from the earth and wrapped around the handles of the shop door, but they would only hold for so long—

_Now what?_ Ariadne looked from side to side. They needed to get help for Crowley – but where? Hospital? Where _was_ the nearest hospital? And how—

Ariadne’s eyes fell on the black Bentley.

“Crowley, give me your keys!”

“What?” asked Crowley.

“Ari—” Dionysus started.

“Keys! Now!” Ariadne said—and didn’t wait. She reached—

And the keys were in her hand. She tapped the fob, and the car unlocked.[4] “In! Now! I’ll drive!”

“But—but you can’t drive!” Aziraphale gasped.

Ariadne stared at him, jaw hanging open, and decided she didn’t have time for this. “ _In_!”

The doors of the Bentley swung open just as the doors of the bookshop splintered.

That was enough to decide Aziraphale and Crowley, who ran/dove/collapsed into the backseat. Dionysus shot one _I hope you know what you’re doing_ look at Ariadne before sliding into the passenger seat.

_That makes two of us,_ Ariadne thought.

She hurled herself into the driver’s seat and remembered just why she hated driving in London. You started in the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road, and then everything just got worse.

Too late to worry about that now. She turned the key, the engine roaring to life.

Then she pulled away from the curb, slammed on the accelerator, and hoped one of them came up with a plan soon.

* * *

As the car lurched to life and tore down the street, Dionysus tried to figure out just what in Gaia’s name was going on here.

That Ariadne was acquainted with the angel and the demon was obvious, as was the fact that there was some kind of emotional connection. The number of people Ariadne would physically block him from shouting at was vanishingly small. And she hadn’t wanted to leave until the angel and the demon were ready to retreat.

And it wasn’t one-sided. The demon had taken a bullet for her!

Speaking of …

Dionysus squirmed so he could see into the backseat. The angel was sitting up, holding the demon against his chest with one hand and pressing his jacket against the demon’s shoulder with the other. The jacket had been white – or at least cream-colored. Now …

Dionysus’s stomach turned to look at it for long, which was why his gaze flickered to the rear window.

He blinked.

“Ari, how fast are we going?”

“Pushing seventy, why?”

There was absolutely no way that any vehicle ought to be following them that closely when they were pushing seventy in the middle of London – not unless the car had flashing blue lights on top. And the seafoam green hatchback that gaining on them didn’t.

“We’ve got company.”

“What?” But Dionysus could hear that it came more from frustration than disbelief. Ariadne grabbed the rearview mirror, swore, and hit the gas even harder, if that was physically possible.[5]

The demon yelled, and even the angel squawked in undignified protest.

Dionysus had bigger things to worry about. Such as the fact that Ariadne was making a sudden right-hand turn, oncoming traffic be damned, without even attempting to slow down. “Where are we going?”

“Not sure yet! Did we lose them?”

Dionysus looked again. “Nope.”

“Damn it!” Another turn onto a side street, this one to the left and on two wheels. Dionysus took hold of a thoughtfully placed bar near the ceiling and held on for dear life.

“ _ARI!_ Look out—”

“I see it, I see it!” And with a snap of her fingers, the delivery truck that had been double-parked in front of them wasn’t there anymore. Another snap of her fingers once they’d passed it, and it was back. Dionysus looked over his shoulder—

Unfortunately, the little green car didn’t crash into the van. It swerved around with a squeal of brakes and a laying on of horns from the rest of the traffic.

“We need a plan!” Dionysus said.

“We need to lose them; _then_ we can worry about a plan!” Once again Ariadne slammed on the brakes and threw the car into a turn that broke just about every rule of the road and probably a couple laws of physics besides. “Can’t you give me a hand?”

Once again, Dionysus looked over his shoulder. He reached out with his power—

An enormous grapevine burst from the asphalt, but by the time it was big enough to do some damage, it was already a hundred feet behind their pursuers.

Next trick, then. There was electricity all over the place – in the buildings, in the streetlamps, in the wires underground. If he could just catch hold of some of it—

But the car was doing much more than seventy now, and every time Dionysus reached for a strand of electricity, it slipped through his fingers. “ _Shit_!”

“Guess not,” Ariadne muttered.

“What about you two?” Dionysus once again squirmed to look at the angel and the demon in the backseat. “Those assholes are your friends, aren’t they?”

“Friendsss,” the demon grunted, “is a _sstrong_ —” His words were cut off by a yelp as Ariadne threw the vehicle into yet another turn and the force of it sent the demon crashing into the angel. Even Dionysus grunted as the travel mug that was still somehow in his pocket dug into his thigh.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Ariadne said, and—

Dionysus stared at her. She looked upset. Not just stressed or scared or (what would be infinitely more helpful) pissed off, but upset. Because the demon was hurt.

He had to do _something_.

The travel mug pressed against him again, and Dionysus had an idea. He pulled it out of his pocket, concentrated, and turned around to hand it to the angel. “Here, give him this.”

“What—” the angel started.

“It’s wine. Strong enough to knock out an elephant. Should take the edge off for him,” he nodded to the demon.

“I can—” the demon started, reaching for the mug with his good hand, but the angel was faster.

“Thank you,” the angel said with enough feeling to make a flush climb up Dionysus’s face. He couldn’t keep the angel’s gaze after that, looking to the rear window instead—

The little green car was close enough that Dionysus could see the gray-haired bitch in the driver’s—no, wait, this was England, that was the passenger seat. The self-replicating goth was in the driver’s seat.

Neither looked happy.

“ _ARI_!”

“Hang on!”

Dionysus barely had time to grab the oh-shit bar before Ariadne wrenched the car to the right and tore down a side street. A one-way side street. Going the wrong way.

“Ari, are you—”

“I know what I’m doing!”

And she seemed to. The vehicles that were barreling toward them, each driver throwing their entire body weight on the horn, disappeared seconds before the inevitable crash and – if those pops Dionysus kept hearing were any indication – reappeared right behind them.

Dionysus closed his eyes, even as the angel said weakly, “Oh, good Lord.”

He didn’t open them until he heard another squeal of brakes and felt the force of another hard right turn. “Is there a reason why we keep going to the right?”

“Trying to get them into an accident!”

“But if we keep this up, we’re just going to be going in circles!”

“ _Do you have a better idea_?!”

“Tadfield!”

That came from the backseat. Dionysus turned around. The angel was still holding his jacket to the demon’s wound, but the demon had slumped to the side and seemed to be – well, hopefully that was just the wine, taking a bit more than just the edge off. “Even if they follow us all the way there, they shouldn’t stay long. Adam has the entire place under his protection. And hopefully that nice young Anathema …”

Here the angel broke off, swallowing, looking at the hopefully-just-sleeping demon with an expression Dionysus couldn’t watch for too long. He wrenched his mind onto something productive. “Adam,” he seized on, “Adam, who’s Adam?”

The angel looked up. “The Antichrist!”

Dionysus did not groan. But he’d helped out with enough horror movies to not like the sound of this.

Then again—if the intelligence his father had gathered was at all correct—this was an Antichrist who’d chosen _not_ to end the world …

“All right, fine. Tadfield it is. Ari, you up for that?”

“Yes! How do we get there?”

Dionysus looked at the angel, who looked a bit panicked. “Um. Er …”

“Never mind!” He fished his phone out of his pocket, opened the maps app and typed in “Tadfield, UK.” The airbase was the first result that popped up, and that would have to do.

“ _Calculating_ …” the phone informed him as he thumbed the volume up.

“Yes, yes, hurry—”

“ _In 500 feet, take the M25 motorway on the left_.”

“SHIT!” Ariadne yelled, and with a suddenness that would have given even the most reckless drivers of certain Northeastern states pause,[6] threw the car to the left, cutting across three lanes of traffic to barrel onto the on-ramp. They had to jump two curbs to do it, and the undercarriage did not sound happy about that, but they did it.

Dionysus once again squirmed to look out the rear window, hoping against hope—

No dice. The little green hatchback was still following them.

“Ari, we’re gonna have to get creative.”

Her only reply was a frustrated growl and a swerve into the next lane.

Dionysus tapped against the glass, trying to think. If this was a movie—well, if this was a movie, with a car like this, it’d probably involve gangsters—

His eyes went wide and once again he turned around. “Don’t suppose this thing comes equipped with a couple Tommy guns?”

“ _What_?” the angel squawked.

“ _Tommy guns_?” Ariadne asked.

“Yes, Tommy guns! This is a gangster car, isn’t it?”

“A gang—” Ariadne started, but she couldn’t finish. Instead, she gasped.

“No,” she whispered. “No, this isn’t a gangster car—this is a _Bond car_!”

“A what?” the angel asked.

“He got me to the theater in ten minutes yesterday, Dionysus!” Ariadne actually turned to look at him, just for a second, and the smile made her almost glow. “He drives like James Bond! So there have to be—Aziraphale, what kind of traps does he have in this thing?”

“ _What_?” The angel—Aziraphale—was saying that a lot.

“Traps! Tricks! Something we can use to get people chasing us to stop chasing us!”

“I …” There was a moment of devastating silence. Then, slowly, Aziraphale murmured, “He … he does love those films …”

“So there has to be something! Dionysus, see what you can find!” That Ariadne couldn’t look herself was obvious – not with the way she was weaving in and out of the different lanes.

Dionysus looked at the dashboard, but he couldn’t see anything there other than what he’d expect to see on a car this old.[7] The center console was the same.

But after so many years with Ariadne, he knew how her magic worked. Sometimes, if she believed something was true, it ended up being true, no matter what reality might have had to say on the matter. The trick was to keep her from realizing she was doing it.

“You’ve got to give me a hint, sweetheart; Bond was always more your thing than mine.”

“Like—like an ejector seat!”

_Oh, please not that._

“Or—or tire-slashers, or a self-destruct button—”

_Not that either!_

“Or fire that shoots out the exhaust! Or an invisibility cloak—like _Die Another Day_!”

“Fire?” Aziraphale asked. “Oh, that _does_ sound like him!”

_There we go!_ “What would it look like?” Dionysus asked Ariadne. “In a Bond movie? The fire exhaust and the invisibility cloak?”

“I—I don’t know! Probably some kind of a switch, with—with _something_ that would tell us what it was!”

“Like a switch with a flame next to it?” Dionysus asked.

“Yes! Yes, that!”

Dionysus had to bite back a smile when a small toggle appeared. Next to it was a small carved flame.

“And the invisibility cloak? What would that look like?” Dionysus asked.

“Another switch—um—maybe a lightning bolt next to it?”

“A lightning—Harry Potter?!” Dionysus asked.

“Well, WHY NOT?”

Considering that another toggle had appeared, right below the flame exhaust, this one with a lightning bolt next to it, Dionysus had to admit that it was a good question.

“To your left – two switches. Looks like you know how the demon thinks, sweetheart.”

Ariadne took her eyes off the road long enough to glance at the console and whoop. “Ok! Ok, now we are in business! Dionysus, do you think you could throw some wine onto our friends back there?”

“ _Wine_?” Aziraphale asked.

“Accelerant,” Dionysus said. He concentrated – pulling wine out of nothing was not easy—

There was a splash; he looked behind to see that the little green car had been doused in purple liquid. “We’re good!”

“Ok—now HANG ON!”

Ariadne didn’t give them much a chance as she slammed the car into reverse and turned on the fire exhaust.

Flame blossomed out the back of the car—right onto the wine-drenched hatchback—

“GO, GO, GO!” Dionysus shouted.

Ariadne threw car back into drive, and it lurched forward. Dionysus waited—with so much wine on the hatchback, there was really only one way this could go—

_BOOM!_

“WA-HOOO!” Ariadne shouted, switching off the flame exhaust and throwing on the invisibility cloak.

And as the car sped down the highway, leaving a blown-to-smithereens hatchback and an almighty traffic jam in their wake, a small, thoroughly inebriated chuckle came from the backseat.

“Did—didja hear that, angel? I finally got m’wahoo!”

* * *

[1] Who was clearly in no way young, and strictly speaking, not a human male.

[2] And women. And man- and woman-shaped beings. And sentient beings who did not identify as man, woman, or man- or woman-shaped. Aziraphale did not discriminate.

[3] Well, there might have been a bit of tunic-befouling terror first. Sometimes one didn’t get the balance right on the first try.

[4] It should go without saying that a 1926 Bentley would not have keyless entry. It should also go without saying that a 1926 Bentley belonging to _Crowley_ would have no need for locks at all. The fact that neither of these things occurred to Ariadne says all that needs to be said about her emotional state.

[5] Since the resulting g-forces nearly sent Dionysus into the backseat, he had to assume it was.

[6] You know who you are.

[7] Including a gas gauge pointing toward E, but he wasn’t going to mention that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
> Want to chat more? Come give me a shout-out on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Next update will be on Saturday, assuming I don't get too far into a Sims rabbit hole. 😉


	10. One More Chance

After blowing up their pursuers, it only took thirty minutes for the Bentley to arrive in Tadfield. Aziraphale thought that it ought to have taken longer than that – certainly the bus ride from Tadfield to Mayfair had taken _much_ longer – but nearly eighty years of driving with Crowley had hopelessly skewed his perception of how long driving anywhere ought to take, so he decided he wasn’t going to worry about it.

He had bigger things to worry about. Such as Crowley.

The bleeding had stopped. That was good; the last thing any of them needed was a discorporation. And the wine Dionysus had given him seemed to be keeping the pain under control – mostly by keeping Crowley unconscious, but Aziraphale would take what he would get.

Beyond that …

The trouble with weapons pulled from raw firmament – as the not-guns that Samael, Legion, and their friends had wielded clearly were – was that they did not just injure physically. They’d been designed back in the old days, before any of the angels (and they had all been angels back then) had corporations to injure. Firmament weapons cut straight through the body and into the, for lack of a better term, soul.

And that was the part Aziraphale couldn’t heal – not on Crowley, anyway. It wasn’t just the pain he’d caused; with Dionysus’s wine, they probably could keep the pain under control. Aziraphale had felt his healing energy doing almost as much damage as the not-bullet had. Which meant …

Aziraphale closed his eyes and forced himself to take deep, steadying breaths. They were going to get help. Anathema—

“Is this the place?” Ariadne asked, and Aziraphale looked up. Before them was the two-story gray stone cottage that he recognized.

More to the point, young Anathema and Newton were standing under the arch-cut shrubbery. Aziraphale had fished Crowley’s phone from his pocket and called them when they got on the M40. “Yes—yes, this is it, dear. Thank you.”

Ariadne brought the car to an almost impossibly gentle stop just outside the shrubbery. For a fraction of a second, there was silence and stillness.

And then everything started moving again. Dionysus was the first to pop out of the car; the door directly behind Aziraphale (and _why_ did the Bentley keep growing extra doors?) opened next. “Aziraphale? Crowley?” asked Anathema.

Aziraphale glanced over his shoulder and flashed Anathema what he hoped was a gentle, calm smile. “Hello, dear. We need to get him out gently—”

“Right, of course. Come on …”

The next few minutes were taken up with Aziraphale extricating himself from the car and getting Crowley out. Thank goodness, Crowley had had enough of Dionysus’s wine that the jostling didn’t disturb him.

Newton took one look at Aziraphale’s ruined jacket, still pressed to Crowley’s shoulder, made a retching sound and turned away.

Just as Anathema was reaching for Crowley’s legs, Dionysus took them. “I’ve got him, miss – can you just get the door for us?”

“I—sure.” Anathema squinted oddly at Dionysus; then her eyes widened. And then she shook her head and trotted for the door, Aziraphale, Dionysus and Crowley between them following in her wake.

“This way—I got the spare bedroom ready,” Anathema said, hurrying into the house and up a set of stairs, leaving Aziraphale and Dionysus to follow as best they could.

“I’ll get the kettle on!” came a voice – Newton’s – from behind them.

“Don’t blow up the stove!” Anathema called back, though to Aziraphale’s ears, the command sounded more teasing than serious. He wished he knew why it made Dionysus jump, though – or if not that, what did.

Finally they were up the stairs and at the doorway that Aziraphale assumed belonged to the spare bedroom. Anathema gestured them all inside so Aziraphale and Dionysus could lay Crowley on the bed.

“Where’s my mug?” Dionysus asked Aziraphale.

“I—oh, dear, I left it back in the car—”

“No worries. I—oh, hello.” He ducked past Anathema to a drinking glass that was, for some reason, on the bedside table. He tapped it twice, and it was filled with wine.

Dionysus then caught Anathema’s eye. “Keep giving him this if you need to keep him knocked out. And let me know if it stops working.”

“That—that looks like wine,” Anathema said.

“Yes, well, my nephew Asclepius has mostly cornered the market on healing—I can just—” Dionysus jumped again and threw a wondering glance over his shoulder. “Anyway. You two still need me?”

Aziraphale shook his head. “No—and—thank you. Truly. For …”

Dionysus’s mouth twisted in a half-smile; he shrugged. “Thank Ariadne, not me.” And without another word, he turned and thundered down the stairs.

“That,” Anathema started, “that is—I mean—is _he_ —who _is_ he?”

Aziraphale sighed. “It’s a … very long story. But Crowley …”

“Right, right! Yeah, ok. Crowley.” Anathema hovered over him, squinting at the jacket. She glanced at Aziraphale. “Can we …”

“I’m more concerned with the spiritual wound – can we do that first?”

Anathema looked again at the bloody jacket, swallowed, but nodded. “Yeah. Ok. Just …” She closed her eyes, shook herself, opened them again, and—

“Whoa.”

Aziraphale tried not to wince.

“How—no, _what_ —?”

“Firmament,” Aziraphale explained. “It’s the weapons we were using in the war. The _first_ war. Can—” Aziraphale’s voice broke; he had to look away and cover his mouth with his hand. “Can you help? Please?”

“I …” Anathema took a deep breath. “Um. Well, huh. Maybe a potion? Or …” Her gaze once again went to Aziraphale’s jacket. “Maybe if I work on patching him up physically, it’ll, um, spread?”

Aziraphale’s knees very nearly gave way. “Physical healing won’t work on this. It has to happen directly on the ethereal plane.”

Anathema shot him a helpless look—and she didn’t say anything further. She didn’t need to.

 _No, no, no, NO—_ They hadn’t come this far for bloody _firmament_ to come between them now! There had to be—there had to be another solution. Another way. Someone who could do healing magic on the soul level, but without damaging Crowley further. Maybe Adam? He was half of Hell—

_Wait …_

“Wait here,” Aziraphale said, and paused only long enough to duck across the bed and kiss Crowley’s forehead before running down the stairs. “Ariadne!”

He found her sitting at Anathema’s kitchen table, next to Dionysus, a steaming mug of tea before her. She looked up as soon as he came in. “How is he?”

Aziraphale’s throat went dry, and there—there was the guilt. He shouldn’t be asking this of her; she was the last person he had any right to ask anything of. Especially after she’d gotten them all out of London. How many miracles had she worked just getting them out of Soho, never mind all the rest?

But what choice did he have? Did Crowley have?

And she must still have questions …

“Anathema isn’t going to be able to help,” Aziraphale said, and he had no idea how he was able to sound so calm. “She can’t—she can’t heal on the ethereal plane. And my energies and his don’t mix. But—but you …”

Ariadne’s eyes were huge; she drew in a shaky breath. “I—I’ve never done anything like that before.”

“I can show you how,” Aziraphale said. “It’s—it’s not _hard_. It’s draining, but the technique is fairly simple.”

“Ok. Ok, sure.” Ariadne gulped and stood.

“Ari—”

Ariadne looked down. Dionysus was looking up at her, his hand halfway to her. But—strangely—he hadn’t taken hers.

Ariadne’s chin wobbled; she took a deep breath. Then she took Dionysus’s hand and squeezed it. “Just trust me, Dionysus. Please? For just a little longer?”

She looked back at Aziraphale and squared her shoulders. “Let’s do this.”

* * *

Crowley lay unmoving on the bed. Except for the fact that he was a bit pale – and unconscious – and had his shoulder wrapped in a jacket that was pretty much done for, he looked … fine.

“So,” Ariadne said, trying not to wring her hands together, “you said ethereal plane. How do we, um, get there?”

“Mmmm … it’s not a question of getting there,” said Aziraphale. “It’s a question of being there.”

“Um …” Ariadne glanced at the room’s only other occupant, Anathema, who was much prettier in person than she was in her passport photo (but who wasn’t?). But Anathema looked at confused as she felt – although maybe a bit more curious.

Aziraphale tilted his head slightly to one side. “Have you ever tried to access it?”

Ariadne shook her head.

“Well, there’s a first time for everything.” Somehow, even when saying that, Aziraphale’s smile was gentle and his eyes were kind. “Now, if you’ll just—oh, I’m sorry.” He’d placed a hand on her shoulder, but withdrew it almost immediately. “I didn’t mean to—that is, do you mind, dear?”

“No! No, it’s fine.”

“Well. All right, then.” Aziraphale smiled and put the hand back on her shoulder. “Deep breath, now.”

Ariadne took one. Then another, just to be sure.

“Excellent. Now close your eyes.”

Ariadne did so.

“Now …”

_Open them._

The voice—it was Aziraphale’s, Ariadne _knew_ that. But it didn’t sound anything like him, and that wasn’t just because he was speaking in her head.

He wasn’t talking about her physical eyes, either. But Ariadne didn’t know how to open—

_You can do it, dear. I have faith in you._

Ariadne gulped, concentrated, and—

She opened her eyes.

_Oh._

She squeaked. Had she said that out loud?

Aziraphale didn’t chuckle. Not really. But the warmth/pleasure/mirth she felt radiating from him was _like_ a chuckle, so “chuckling” was as good a word for it as anything. _You did, in a manner of speaking. Which isn’t really speaking at all. But take a moment to get your bearings, dear._

Ariadne decided that was good advice and took it.

She looked around.[1] She was aware, on one level, that they hadn’t left the spare bedroom in Jasmine Cottage. On the other hand, she was equally aware that wherever they were, it wasn’t the spare bedroom in Jasmine Cottage. It looked – if it looked like anything – like the vast plane of space, dotted by pinpricks of light with fine stardust sprinkled throughout.

Aziraphale was still very near her, or at least, she thought the being was Aziraphale. If being was even the right word for the glowing shape next to her. Ariadne saw two pure white wings, burnished hooves, eyes everywhere, and faces. First an eagle, then an ox, then a lion, then a person— _Aziraphale_. And—

Those were stumps. Two of them. Where—wings?—ought to have been.

 _You’re trying to process all this on a very human level, aren’t you?_ asked Aziraphale, sounding just a touched amused. Then, much less amused. _But I suppose it’s not surprising … it’s what you know._

_Yeah. Yeah, let’s go with that._

Aziraphale couldn’t hold onto the same face for longer than an eye-blink, but somehow each one that appeared before her was smiling.

_Are you ready to try to help Crowley, dear?_

_I—_

Ariadne turned.

If it was possible, her jaw dropped.

She was looking at Crowley. She knew, on a level too deep for mere knowledge, that she was looking at Crowley. What she saw was not Crowley.

Where Aziraphale was light, this—Crowley—was darkness. Dark fire, glowing red/black/purple. And _six_ wings, two around the head, two where wings were supposed to be, two at the feet. Each wing inky black. The fire that made up his body looked almost like scales. And even as Ariadne watched, his shape seemed to shift – one minute vaguely humanoid, the next serpentine, the next something she couldn’t attempt to put into words.

In every form there was an angry, glowing hole. A rip in the fabric that made Crowley, Crowley. Just looking at it made Ariadne hurt on a level that went deeper than the skin.

 _How do I—_ she started to ask, and then realized she didn’t need to. She knew how to fix this.

But knowing how and doing it were two very different stories …

_Is this going to hurt him?_

She felt a tendril of fear snake out of Aziraphale. _I hope not. I hope you two are similar enough that your energies will be able to help his. Mine are too different._ Then, stern, _If it hurts_ you _, stop at once._

_But—_

_He took this wound so you wouldn’t be hurt. He would not appreciate you taking on hurt to fix him._

Ariadne looked at the angry, glowing hole and decided that she’d rather deal with a Crowley who was fixed and unappreciative than one who—wasn’t. But Aziraphale didn’t need to know that.

She reached out—

And almost gasped. The hand/arm/energy that moved toward Crowley was silver, equal parts blinding light and dark fire. It moved like mercury, twisting and twining over itself, reflecting and splaying light. And there was power coming off every inch of it.

But she didn’t have time to marvel over that. She had work to do.

She gently placed her energy near the gaping hole in Crowley’s shoulder-ish region.

He flinched. Even under whatever Dionysus had put in that wine. But—Ariadne watched closely—she wasn’t _hurting_ him. The area she was touching was sore, tender, but she wasn’t causing more damage through the contact.

That would have to be enough. Ariadne got to work.

Healing Crowley was a little like sewing up a tear in fabric. It was a little like tying knots. It was a little like shaping dough, or clay. It was a little like pouring asphalt into a crack in the pavement. It was a little like playing with fire, and it was a lot like herding cats.

Actually, what she was doing – taking parts of Crowley’s essence and knitting them back together, covering the hole, smoothing it over so the rest of Crowley’s essence could fill in the void underneath and start to heal – wasn’t really like any of these things, when you got right down to it. But it was a little like them, and that was enough to be getting on with.

And sometime later – a few minutes, or a few hours, or a few months or a few years – she was done. Ariadne straightened, surveyed her handiwork—

_Oh, no!_

_What?_ That was Aziraphale, sounding as alarmed as she’d heard him in this form.

 _Look!_ She gestured to Crowley’s shoulder-area, where the hole had been. Now there was a line of dark, pulsing energy, nowhere near as vibrant as the rest of the fire that made up Crowley.

 _Oh, that?_ There was no mistaking the relief there. _That’s just a scar, dear. Look._ Aziraphale gestured to a similar line on him, more shadow than darkness, that extended from about where his knee would be up to his hip and onto his stomach. _I have one, too._

_That—that looks like it hurts._

_Well, sometimes, yes, it does. And Crowley’s will, too. But—_ Aziraphale stopped, and each of his flickering faces registered concern, and, yes, a little bit of fear. _Ariadne, you need to go back to the mortal plane._

 _What? Why? What’s happening?_ But even as she said this, jagged lines – like lightning strikes – cut across her vision, swirling through the darkness, tearing it apart—

 _Ariadne. Ariadne, look at me. Listen to me._ The urgency Aziraphale pushed at her brooked no argument. _Deep breaths, now._

From a long way off, Ariadne thought she heard something like a mortal body taking deep, shaking breaths.

_Good. Now close your eyes._

She did.

“… and open them.”

Ariadne did.

She blinked. She was back in the spare bedroom. Except—she was facing Aziraphale? Where was Crowley? No, wait, his feet were right there—

But now Aziraphale was starting to tilt sideways—

“Whoa!” Aziraphale caught her, somehow, twisted things around so Ariadne was suddenly sitting on the end of the bed. She found herself stupidly grateful for the lack of footboard.

“I—” Ariadne began.

“Shhhh.” Aziraphale crouched before her, both hands on her shoulders, staring deeply into her eyes. “Deep breaths. In and out. With me, now. In …” Aziraphale took a deep breath, held it for five seconds, and then let it out again. “And out.”

Ariadne breathed with him. One breath. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Finally Aziraphale smiled. “Good. That’s it. Keep breathing, just that. Ariadne …”

Aziraphale’s voice shook with an emotion Ariadne didn’t have the spare brain cells to name. So she smiled. Or at least she thought she smiled. Tried to smile? Her facial muscles may or may not have cooperated.

“Should I get her something?” That was Anathema, hovering over Aziraphale’s shoulder and peering worriedly at Ariadne. “Water? Aspirin? … Water and aspirin?”

“I think not, dear,” Aziraphale said. “Ingesting anything right now could be a mistake. But thank you.”

Anathema swallowed, and then, maybe seeing Ariadne’s wondering gaze on her, shot Ariadne a quick smile.

Once again, Ariadne tried to smile. Once again, she wasn’t sure how well it worked.

“Ariadne.” The name was enough to send Ariadne’s gaze flickering back to Aziraphale. “Do you want to lie down?”

Ariadne didn’t trust herself to speak. She tried nodding instead. That was a mistake – the room suddenly spun in three different directions at once.

“I thought so. Here, let me help.” Aziraphale put an arm around her shoulders and helped Ariadne scoot so that her head was in the general vicinity of the pillows and her feet were on the bed. “That’s it. Lie back, now.”

Ariadne was almost there, but she stopped, grabbing the closest of Aziraphale’s arms. “Crowley?”

Aziraphale smiled. “He’ll be fine. And that’s thanks to you. Truly.” Aziraphale brushed a few tendrils of hair out of Ariadne’s face. “Thank you, Ariadne.”

“Good,” Ariadne said, or tried to. She also smiled again, or tried to. In truth, she wasn’t sure what she was doing or just trying to do. All she really knew was that there was now a pillow under her head, a mattress under her feet …

It would be so easy to just close her eyes and dive into unconsciousness.

So that was what she did.

* * *

If Dionysus hadn’t had someone – Newton, who said to call him Newt – to talk to, he would have been even more of a jumpy wreck than he already was. And he was quite the jumpy wreck even now, but, with a distraction (Newt) around, he was able to hide it.

Especially since what Newt had to say was … intriguing. Particularly as it related to what had happened at the Tadfield airbase on the day that, had the Abrahamic folks had their way, would have been the end of the world as everyone knew it.

Dionysus was only mildly interested in how certain anthropomorphic personifications of rather troubling concepts had been driven off, or how the Antichrist had convinced this Satan fellow to go, quite literally, to Hell. He was _very_ interested in how their merry band of heroes had managed to keep the bombs from going off.

And that was a subject on which young Newt could speak with some authority.

“I mean, it wasn’t really _special_ ,” he was saying, staring into his teacup. Dionysus thought he ought to be annoyed by this, especially since his truth-enticing power worked so much better with sustained eye contact, but really, he didn’t need it. Newt had barely taken any prodding, supernatural or otherwise, to talk. “Just … you know. Tried to fix the system. And mucked it up entirely.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Story of my life, really.”

Oh, _that_ was interesting, especially given everything else Dionysus had sensed since coming within twenty feet of Newt. “Oh?” Dionysus asked.

Really, this was _too easy_. A quirked eyebrow and tone of genuine interest, and Newt was off to the races. “I wanted to be a computer engineer, you know!” Newt laughed. “Or some kind of electrical engineer. An inventor or something. I used to do experiments in my bedroom – kid stuff, you know, making radios and things like that? – and knock out the power for half the block.”

“Did you,” Dionysus said. “So you felt strongly about electrical … things?”

Newt smiled. “Yeah. Weird, isn’t it? And I can barely touch them without making them blow up. Just my luck, you know?”

If what Dionysus was thinking was in any way correct, luck had nothing to do with it. But, “Oh, I don’t know,” was what he said. “Seems to me the entire world was lucky to have someone with your particular, er, talents around.”

“Who’d’ve thought that mucking stuff up would help to save the world?” Newt said, grinning.

“Honestly, that sounds to me to be the most human thing about this whole mess.”

He probably shouldn’t have said that. Newt’s brows furrowed, and he frowned faintly. “How—how do you know Aziraphale and Crowley, anyway?” Newt asked.

“Er—” Dionysus began, because _Well, I don’t actually know them, I just happened to be in their shop when some other people burst in and started shooting, and all of the not-shooting people thought it would be a good idea to stick together_ was not an explanation he was prepared to share. Especially since he knew damn well that wasn’t the whole story.

Luckily, he was saved by the bell. Or the buzz, in this case, specifically that of his phone in his pocket.

“Hold on just a minute …” Dionysus said, though what he’d do if it was that stupid celebrity-tracking app again, he wasn’t sure.[2] Probably pretend he’d lost his train of thought and change—

It was not the celebrity-tracking app.

“I—I need to take this. Sorry,” he said, and without waiting for Newt to politely acquiesce, popped out of his chair and trotted for the nearest door. He waited until he was outside, door firmly shut, before answering.

“Hermes?”

“There’s a rare bookshop in Soho that now has a vineyard growing in it,” Hermes said without preamble. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

Dionysus groaned and ran a hand down his face.

“What did you _do_?”

“Defended myself, mostly,” Dionysus sighed. “And Ariadne.”

For a minute, there was only surprised silence from the other end of the line. “The angel and demon – they attacked you?”

“What? No, no, they’re fine.” Well, Dionysus hoped the demon was fine. But that was more than Hermes needed to know. “Some friends of theirs showed up. Packing heat.”

“ _What_?”

Dionysus pushed a hand through his hair. “Look, if you want me to explain … it’s not going to happen, and that’s not me being difficult.” At least not completely. “I have no idea who they were, what they wanted, or what they thought shooting – actually I’m not entirely sure they were real guns, now that I think about it – but anyway, really not sure what they were trying to accomplish. Hail of bullets and all, bigger things to focus on, you know?”

Hermes, bless him, didn’t press further on that. “Are you ok?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“And Ariadne?”

Dionysus let himself wince, remembering the demon tackling her to the ground and getting a bullet to the shoulder for his trouble. Remembering the self-replicating goblin standing over her and pointing a gun at her chest. Remembering how upset she’d looked as they drove away from the bookshop, how she hadn’t hesitated when Aziraphale asked her to help him help the demon.

For Hermes, he selected an answer that was true but certainly wasn’t the whole truth. “She wasn’t injured. And she was the one who drove us all out of there.”

“Drove you out of there,” Hermes mused. “There’s a car that exploded on the – what was it – M25, apparently. Would you happen to know anything about _that_?”

Dionysus winced again. “Why do you think I would—”

“‘Eyewitnesses,’” Hermes interrupted, sounding suspiciously like he was quoting something, “‘are claiming the scene was like something out a movie.’”

“Shit,” Dionysus muttered, and made his way over to the bench that someone had thoughtfully placed in the yard.

“Seriously, what did you _do_?”

“Self-defense! The people who were shooting at us started chasing us!”

“Still shooting?”

“Thankfully, no. But we had no idea how long that would last. And how do you even know any of this, anyway?”

“You near a TV, kid?”

Dionysus cringed. “Oh, _no_.”

“BBC has wall-to-wall coverage. Chyrons about ‘signs and portents’ and ‘strange happenings in London.’”

“ _Fuck_.” Dionysus rubbed the back of his neck and ran a hand through his hair. “Father’s gonna chain me up in the Caucasus and send an eagle to eat my liver, isn’t he?”

“I’m sure he’s thought of it,” Hermes said, far too cheerful and matter-of-fact. “However, I don’t even think I’ll have to talk him out of it. Hera’s already on it.”

“… _What_?!?!?”

“But if you don’t want to end up in hock to Hera, which I’m pretty sure you don’t,” Hermes went on blithely, “you’d probably better get on the groveling and get on it quick.”

Groveling? There was no amount of groveling in the world that could possibly make up for a fuck-up on this scale—

… Unless …

“… Would Father be open to a bargain?”

“A _bargain_?” Hermes laughed. “With him? Come on. What could you possibly have that he wants?”

“What if I told you that I know exactly what went down at that airbase?” Dionysus challenged.

Silence.

“Father wants to know that, doesn’t he?” Dionysus continued. “And now I do.” Or he would, soon enough. Wouldn’t be hard to get the rest of the story out of Newt, this time listening like his life depended on it. “I’d be happy to share, assuming—”

“ _How_?” Hermes demanded.

Dionysus laughed. It rang false even in his ears, so Hermes wouldn’t be fooled for a moment, but it was the thought that counted. “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: I’m very easy to talk to. And,” before Hermes could use that to try to worry more information out of him, “I think I might have some information for you, too.”

“For _me_?”

“You wanted to know why the name Newton Pulsifer sounded familiar, didn’t you?” Dionysus said. Even in the information barrage that “family meeting” had been, he remembered that bit – if only because it was rare that Hermes admitted to being confused or not knowing something. “I think I might have something to jog your memory.”

“And what would that be?”

Dionysus took a deep breath. This was a gamble, but who better to try it with a god who blessed the lucky? “Have you ever had to clean up any Father-related messes with someone called Pulsifer?”

Once again, there was silence. Then, softly but growing louder with every syllable, “Oh, _no_. Now I remember. Fuck! Not _him_ , I hated him!”

“Hated who?”

“Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery!”

“Hey, that’s one thing I haven’t—wait. Is it adultery if the other person is the one who’s married?”

“No, not _you_ —although don’t let Pater know that; he’d be terribly disappointed. Ugh. Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery was a half-brother of ours.”

“… I’m sorry, _what_?”

“His mother was a Puritan,” Hermes huffed.

“Father slept with a Puritan?”

“Several of them, although there was only one pregnancy.”

“ _Why_?”

“Why do you _think_? This is the god who turned himself into a shower of gold sparks to sleep with a woman whose father had locked her up in a bronze tower with no windows and no door, remember?”

“Ugh.” As always when he thought of his father’s escapades in too much detail, Dionysus was consumed by the urge to take a bath. “All right, so, Father decided to add a Puritan or five to the notches on his bedpost. And she named the kid—”

“Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery.”

“So, clearly he was fucked from the get-go.”

“Maybe,” Hermes grunted. “Or maybe he deserved it. Retroactively.”

“And why would that be?”

Another wordless sound of frustration. “Do you what the kid decided to be? Once he grew up?” Hermes didn’t wait for Dionysus to answer. “A _witchfinder_!”

Dionysus’s eyes narrowed. “So … he went after monsters for a living? Like ninety percent of Father’s other—”

“ _No_! I mean, well, yes, sort of. Except he wasn’t going after, you know, actual monsters. More anyone who was a smidge to the left of regular mortal. And he was _good_ at it. Always knew the difference between the women whose only crimes were being warty, old, and/or wealthy and the actual supernaturals and would let the former go.”

“… How is that not better than the alternative?”

“It’s the fucking _principle_ of the thing! He was an actual demigod using his powers to persecute people who were a lot more mortal and a lot less powerful than he was. Or could have been, ‘cause he never really learned how to use his powers. Hypocrisy doesn’t begin to cover it.”

“Did he know he was a demigod?” Dionysus asked.

“You think I didn’t try to tell him? Repeatedly? Even Apollo helped! Kept trying to send oracles and prophecies his way—but the damn fool didn’t _listen_! Kept claiming he was a man of God and that God would protect him from the demons who kept trying to trip him up—well, God did a fat lot of good when he got himself blown up, let me tell you—”

“Wait, hold on— _blown up_?”

Hermes paused. And then he chuckled. It was not a nice chuckle. “Oh, yeah. That. That was kind of funny. So for his final act – not that he knew it at the time – dear Adultery went after a witch. Agnes Nutter – that’s a name you don’t forget. Except, she wasn’t the ‘eye of newt and toe of frog’ kind of witch; no, she was a prophetess with Cassandra-level accuracy—”

“Oh boy,” Dionysus muttered.

“Yeah, and, well, she knew he was coming, see? So the day the torch-carrying mob was going to show up to burn her, she stuffed her petticoats full of gunpowder and roofing nails—”

“You’re fucking _kidding_.”

“Nope,” Hermes said pleasantly. “The only thing they found of dear old Adultery was his hat. And, well, I found his soul. He was pretty shocked when I showed up to collect him, let me tell you. I think he was expecting St. Peter or something.”

“Do Puritans even believe in St. Peter? Thought that was Catholics.”

“Details!” Hermes dismissed. “Anyway. He wouldn’t come with me to the Underworld – which was stupid, and I told him so, because as a son of Zeus he’d be a shoo-in for Elysium – so I dumped him on the Abrahamics and as far as I know, they’re still arguing over his soul to this day.”

“Huh,” Dionysus murmured. “And – before this happened – did he manage to get around to reproducing?”

“Oh, yeah, he was middle-aged by the time he went sky-high. He must have had—wait.”

Dionysus waited.

“You—you think the Newton kid might be a descendent?”

Dionysus glanced back at the cottage, thinking of computers that fried themselves when Newt touched them, blocks that lost power when he tried electrical experiments, and a – housemate? Girlfriend? – who told him, “Don’t blow up the stove!” when he offered to make tea.

“Let me put it like this,” Dionysus said. “I’ve never seen anyone who _wasn’t_ a descendent have bad luck around electronics that’s half as bad as this kid’s.”

“… Huh,” was all Hermes replied to that. “You know Pater isn’t going to care about a descendent that many generations down, right? I mean, he barely takes notice of his actual kids unless they show they might be worth paying attention to.”

“And how is a descendent who helped to save the entire world not worth paying attention to? Heracles did less and became an actual god. _I_ did less and became an actual god.”

“Bullshit, kid. You make the world worth living in. Don’t forget that.”

“Thanks,” Dionysus said, swallowing hard. “Anyway. You think you can confirm that the Newton kid is descended from Adultery?”

“Sure, shouldn’t be too hard – might have to cash in a favor with Hestia to get her genealogical expertise on the case, but, you know, doable. But you’re going to owe me big for this one.”

“Nah. _You_ can take credit for figuring out that one of however-many mortals who saved the world is a descendent. I think that’s plenty of payback, don’t you?”

Any one of Dionysus’s other siblings would have taken that bargain and ran cackling with it off into the sunset. Not Hermes. “And where does that leave _you_?”

“Still sitting pretty,” Dionysus replied. “Because I still haven’t told you _how_ he helped save the world – or what the rest of them did, either.”

With that, Dionysus hung up and turned to the cottage.

He sighed. Then he squared his shoulders and trudged back inside. Because if he wanted to keep himself and Ariadne from ending up chained to a mountainside, he needed to figure out just what had gone down at that airbase. And he needed to do it fast.

* * *

Crowley was an old hand at sleep. He’d even given drunken sleep a go now and again. But for all his experience at sleep, waking up someplace unfamiliar – a place where he had no memory of going …

Well, he did have experience with that set of circumstances. It just wasn’t _good_ experience.

So perhaps it was no surprise when, upon opening his eyes to see a room he didn’t recognize, his first instinct was to bolt upright and get the Heaven out of there. Unfortunately, the “bolting upright” part led to him slamming his hands onto the mattress, putting pressure on his left arm, and the pain that shot through his shoulder at that trick left him seeing stars.

“Crowley, easy! Hush, hush. Everything’s all right,” Aziraphale said. So Aziraphale was here, wherever “here” was. That could be very good or very bad.

A hand rested on Crowley’s shoulder – the good one – and another lifted his bad arm so he wasn’t putting any weight on it. “It’s all right. You’re safe. We’re all safe. Everything is just fine.”

Crowley took a few deep breaths and let his eyes dart around the room so he could judge that for himself.

He was in a bedroom of some kind, in particular the kind that decided “shabby chic” was an aesthetic that could be achieved by picking up a few older furnishings and some knockoff décor and throwing it all together, rather than the honest way.[3] He was lying on a bed. There was a tartan afghan thrown over him, which, despite the “eclectic” air of the room, managed to clash with absolutely every other bit of décor in it. That was a comforting sign; only Aziraphale could manage to miracle up an afghan like _that_ , and if he was miracling blankets, surely whatever they had gotten themselves into was nothing they couldn’t get themselves out of.

However, Crowley’s comfort fled the minute he realized that the blanket hadn’t just been thrown over him. He looked to his right.

“Angel—”

“She’s _fine_ ,” Aziraphale said, whispered really, as if he’d read Crowley’s mind. Maybe he had. “Just resting. She—she’s had a busy day.”

Crowley decided he wasn’t going to believe that until he was able to confirm it for himself. But looking at Ariadne – who was on her side, her back to him, curled up like a child and fast asleep – certainly didn’t disprove what Aziraphale was saying. If anything, she looked peaceful, content.

Crowley swallowed hard. “When—when you say ‘busy day’ …”

“Well, there was smiting Legion,” Aziraphale started.

“That bit I remember.”

“And getting us out of London. All that mad driving. And miracling things so we didn’t crash.”

“I sort of remember that.” He definitely remembered pain every time she had slammed on the brakes or thrown the Bentley into a turn. He also vaguely remembered a wahoo, although he couldn’t recall the context.

“And I imagine there was probably even more miracling after we’d, er, blown up our pursuers, what with the invisibility cloak and all—people can’t really avoid hitting you if they can’t _see_ you—”

“Wait. Invisibility cloak? And did you say _blow up_?”

“Oh, you don’t remember that? Well, I can see why, given I’d dosed you with that wine … anyway, yes, Ariadne used the flamethrower exhaust to set fire to some wine Dionysus – her young man – obligingly poured on Samael and her, um, friends. And then, well …” Aziraphale took his hands away from Crowley long enough to spread them and make a rather unconvincing explosion noise.

In other circumstances, Crowley might have found the picture highly amusing. In these circumstances, his brain was still short-circuiting on a certain phrase. “Sorry, did you say ‘flamethrower exhaust’?”

“Er. Yes?”

“As in – an exhaust pipe that shoots flame? Just to be clear, that is what you mean?”

“… It is.”

“And this flamethrower exhaust, what vehicle is it on?”

“The Bentley, dear boy.”

“My Bentley. The one I’ve had since 1926?”

“Indeed.”

Crowley swallowed hard. “My Bentley does not have a flamethrower exhaust.”

Aziraphale’s mouth opened.

Aziraphale’s mouth shut.

Aziraphale looked at Ariadne, and Crowley found himself looking in that direction as well. “Well. It. Er. It certainly _did_ have a flamethrower exhaust when …”

Crowley looked sharply at the angel as the latter trailed off, a thoughtful look settling onto his face. “Let me guess – your Bentley doesn’t have an invisibility cloak, either?”

“What, like Harry Potter?”

“Or an ejector seat? Tire slashers? A self-destruct button?”

“A _ssself-dessstruct_ button?”

“… Huh,” Aziraphale murmured. Slowly, he sank onto the chair placed next to the bed.[4] “Interesting … I wonder …” He shook his head. “Anyway, I suppose that means she has even more reasons to be tired out. Besides the smiting and the driving and the …”

The thoughtful look fled, replaced by a guilty one. “Healing you …”

Crowley’s eyes bugged. “ _Healing_ me? You mean—” He tried to look at his shoulder, but the bullet had entered his back, so he couldn’t really see—

“Your corporation was able to self-heal once the ethereal wound was taken care of,” Aziraphale said, “although you’ll be quite sore for a while. I’m—I’m not entirely certain if that’s because of the ethereal wound or the corporal one.” Aziraphale took a deep breath and ran both hands through his hair. “When—when I—well, I didn’t have a corporation at the time, so my experience isn’t going to be very useful in this regard, I’m afraid …”

That, Crowley decided, was a thread he would definitely be unravelling – later. “Ariadne _healed_ me. Ssspiritually.”

Aziraphale swallowed once, twice, then took another deep breath and looked Crowley in the eye. There was absolutely no mistaking the rock-hard certainty in those sky blue eyes. “Yes.”

“Aziraphale—”

“Anathema couldn’t. She’s a human; she had no idea where to start. I thought of Adam, but—he’s half-human, and he’s _eleven_. Ariadne …”

“I could have hurt her,” Crowley growled. “We’re both blessssed lucky I didn’t hurt _you_ when you tried!”

“And I would have kept trying, except for the obvious fact that it was hurting _you_ ,” Aziraphale replied. “And believe me, I am aware you wouldn’t want this; I didn’t want this—”

“Then _why_ —”

“Because after everything we have been through, every battle we have fought, everything we have won, I could not lose you now to bloody _firmament_!” Aziraphale’s voice shook more with every syllable – Crowley had no idea how he did that and still didn’t speak above a whisper. “That—that would not be fair, Crowley. Not to you, not to me, and not to Ariadne, either.”

Now his gaze dropped. “Of course, if you want to be angry with me over it, I—well, I wouldn’t blame you. I’m not particularly pleased with myself over it, either.” But he swallowed hard, looked up, and when he did, he wore no hint of regret. Guilt, yes, but not regret. “But I would absolutely do it again, and what’s more, I think _she_ would do it again, too.”

Well. When he put it like that … Crowley sighed and let himself flop back against the pillows.

“You make it very difficult to stay angry with you for long, angel.”

A shy, hesitant smile made a quick appearance and was gone almost before Crowley could blink. “Oh, I don’t know.” Aziraphale chuckled mirthlessly. “I seem to recall at least one decades-long sulk.”

“That was _different_.”

“Quite.” Aziraphale breathed deeply. “Everything is different now.”

“True.” And Crowley’s eyes slid to Ariadne, still curled on her side, still breathing deeply, still asleep.

She must be a fantastically deep sleeper – or that tired.

“So,” Crowley asked, “any idea what our next move should be?”

“Not yet, dear boy.”

“Ah.” Crowley sat up again – keeping weight off his bad arm and shoulder – and turned back to Aziraphale.

“Well then. We’d best get on with that.”

* * *

[1] In a manner of speaking. Which really wasn’t speaking at all. In fact, for the sake of brevity, assume everything from here on out is an extended metaphor for an experience that is not reducible to human language or frankly, human experience.

[2] It had already gone off once, informing him that Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston had been sighted in his area. Even by the standards of that app, the notification was utterly nonsensical. The next Thor movie wasn’t filming yet, and last Dionysus had heard, it was supposed to be filming in Australia.

[3] Which, in Crowley’s opinion, consisted of buying a space (say, a bookshop); furnishing it with high-quality, durable items and a certain amount of kitsch (say, every angel-themed gewgaw and gimcrack one could get one’s hands on); inhabiting it for a given amount of time (say, two hundred years and counting); and changing as little possible along the way.

[4] It was a wingback chair. And tartan. Another point in their favor, since if Aziraphale was miracling up chairs, clearly the world wasn’t ending (again).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
> Want to chat more? Come give me a shout-out on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Chapter 11 should be up on Tuesday!


	11. How Long Can You Stand the Heat?

When Samael had allowed Legion to talk her into attacking the bookshop and the god inside of it, she had planned to fail. Failure had been the _point_. They needed an almighty cock-up to prove that angels and demons couldn’t work together and that they’d all be better off if they resumed their war footing and went back to plotting Armageddon.

She just hadn’t quite expected to fail quite this well.

Samael pulled the icepack she had been holding to her head away and scowled at it. Discorporation was never fun, but discorporation via explosion had to be one of her least favorite ways to get rid of a body. And the icepack wasn’t helping her to deal with the residual aftershocks.

The fact that the intern was in the next infirmary bed over, sobbing, wasn’t helping.

Samael sighed, flopped against the pillows, and wondered if maybe she should ask for earmuffs instead.

And she wondered how Mephistopheles was doing. He and Legion would have been sent to Hell after their discorporations. Mephistopheles probably wouldn’t be happy about losing his body – he’d held onto it for at least the past thousand years, maybe longer – and unlike Samael, he didn’t have the pull to get another body with the exact same specifications.

_Sorry, buddy._ Hopefully if their plan had worked, it would all be worth it—

The doors to the infirmary (one of the few places in Heaven that _had_ doors) thundered open, and Samael figured they were all about to find out.

“SAMAEL!” That was Gabriel.

“Oi! No need to yell,” she grumbled. “You do realize I’m not the only patient in here, right?”

If the way the floors shook as Gabriel pounded his way to her were any indication, Gabriel was not taking that request to heart. “What the, and please do excuse my French, _Hell_ was all that?” Gabriel demanded.

Samael’s response was a glare. Gabriel had no right to demand anything of her. They were the same rank; if Gabriel took the role of manager over the cherubim and principalities and all the rest, it was because _someone_ had to and he was at least a little bit good at it. Michael, Michael might have a right to demand something of her, being “first among equals” and all that, but Gabriel—

As Samael glared, she realized Gabriel wasn’t alone. He’d dragged Michael and Uriel into this with him.

Michael had an eyebrow raised.

Samael huffed and let her head fall back. “What happened was that some idiot demon thought it would be a _grand_ idea to attack a literal god with some firmament, and I stupidly let myself get talked into it.”

Her stomach roiled a little. Displacing blame was not her way; she preferred to spit out the truth, whatever it was, and take what guilt and blame justly belonged to her. The last thing intelligent people did when things had gone pear-shaped was waste time by arguing over whose fault it was.

But muddying the waters was part of the plan, so muddy them Samael would, assuming the whole time that Mephistopheles was doing the same thing Down Below.

“Interesting,” Michael murmured. “Hastur claims that both of the demons on the scene are saying that the entire thing was _your_ idea.”

Hastur had already spoken to Mephistopheles and Legion? As soon as the question occurred to her, Samael kicked herself for asking it. Of course he had. Hell wasn’t going to give its agents time to rest and recover after a cock-up as spectacular as this. If she wasn’t an archangel, she probably wouldn’t have been given as much as time as she had been given.

“Would you expect anything else out of a demon?” Samael pointed out. Perhaps a rant might have made the point better, but she just didn’t have the energy for it. Besides, there was something to be said for not being the lady who doth protest too much.

“Not really,” Michael said. “Which is why we booked a conference room on the fifth floor. If we’re to get to the bottom of all of this, it will only happen when we’re all together.”

Samael goggled. The _fifth_ floor? There was nothing particularly significant about the fifth floor – expect for the fact that it was no-mans-land, neutral territory used for the extremely rare meeting between both sides. So neutral that no weapons were permitted, no aggression allowed, by decree of the Almighty Herself.

It was part of the reason why both sides, when they had to meet, preferred to do so on Earth. Earth was technically neutral, but nobody was enforcing a ceasefire there.

If they were meeting on the fifth floor … this had gotten serious in ways Samael hadn’t planned for.

“And the meeting is now,” Gabriel said, looking like he was about to haul Samael off the cot whether she wanted to come or not.

Samael narrowed her eyes at him and levered herself up, ignoring the twinges of residual pain that came from everywhere. Uriel gently helped the intern up as well. “Then let’s go.”

Getting to the conference room didn’t take long. The infirmary was close to the elevators, and the conference room booked was also close.

When they got there, though, the room was already half-full – with Beelzebub, Dagon, Hastur, Legion, and Mephistopheles.

Samael permitted herself a single, swift glance at Mephistopheles. He sat gingerly, as if he too was still dealing with residual aches, but otherwise seemed all right. Good.

That left Samael free to focus her fury on Legion. “ _You_!” she shouted. “You bloody _moron_!”

“Hey, it wasn’t just—”

“Let’s attack a _god_ , he says, it’ll be _easy_ , he says, I’ve got _firmament_ —”

“And was it a total bloody loss?” Legion fired back. “Little miss over there managed to put a hole into the demon Crowley, didn’t she?”

The intern sniffled, even as almost all eyes in the room turned to her. “I m-m-meant to hit the g-g-god!”

“You _what_?” demanded Beelzebub, even as Uriel gasped and Hastur laughed.

Dagon was the next to speak, smoldering at Gabriel. “You sent an _intern_ to tail a pair of traitors who managed to outwit both our sides and stop Armageddon.”

Gabriel bristled. “It was temporary. Hadraniel had other—”

“An _intern_!”

If it didn’t fly in the face of Samael’s larger goals, she would have cheered Dagon on.

As it was, she wasn’t sure she’d have to do anything. As long as Dagon and Gabriel kept shouting at each other—

Michael cleared her throat, and somehow that shut Dagon and Gabriel up. “I think,” she said, “we should all have a seat before we start arguing, shouldn’t we? Samael, Liel, you first.”

Samael tried to hide her scowl as she took a seat across from Legion. The intern and the other archangels filled in around her.

“Now,” Michael said, folding her hands before her, “we called this meeting to get to the bottom of what happened on Earth earlier today. I think the best way to do this with a minimum of argument is to have each witness tell their part of the story without interruption. Then we can iron out any discrepancies as a group. Beelzebub, Dagon, Hastur, are you in agreement?”

“Yezz,” Beelzebub said, and that seemed to be enough for all of them.

“Excellent. Mephistopheles …”

Mephistopheles jumped.

“It has not escaped my notice that you are the only one of the witnesses who has not said anything yet. Therefore, I think you ought to tell your version of the story first – unless, of course, your superiors have an objection to that.”

They did not. So Mephistopheles had no choice but to swallow, stare at the battered faux wood conference table, and tell his end of the story.

With Legion sitting right next to him, he couldn’t lie – too much – Samael knew that. But he could spin. And he did. Downplaying Legion’s utter stupidity, playing up Samael’s recklessness[1] and the intern’s foolhardiness.

Samael had to hide a grin, even as she plotted how she’d return the favor once her turn came along.

Unfortunately, her turn would be a long time coming.

“—and then Legion – or one of Legion – tried to separate the redhead from the rest of the group, and she …” Mephistopheles hesitated, his gaze flickering to Samael for a fraction of a second. “I think she smote them. Or one of—”

“Smote?!” Beelzebub demanded.

“Smote?” Uriel asked.

“Smote! Definitely smote,” Legion said. “We’ve been smited—smote—smitten?—whatever. It’s happened before. We know what it feels like. That was a smiting.”

“You’ve got another angel working with the traitors?” Hastur snarled at Gabriel.

“We most certainly do not!”

“Demons can’t smite,” Dagon snapped. Her eyes were narrowed at Gabriel. “We can annihilate, pulverize, liquify, decimate—we can do lots. But smiting? That’s _your_ lot.”

“But …” Gabriel trailed off and stared at Samael. “You would have recognized another angel.”

That was true; she would have. Even if they didn’t know each other, all the Host always recognized each other, on Earth as it was in Heaven. It was one of the perks of the tribe.

… Who _was_ that redhead? And how was she able to smite anyone or anything?

“How do we know that the Greeks don’t have a power similar to smiting?” Samael asked. “Lightning, for instance. We had one of Zeus’s brats there; if the redhead is another one—”

“Yeah, no. We’ve been struck by lightning before. That wasn’t lightning. That was _smit-ing_ ,” Legion said, drawing out each syllable.

“But—” Samael said.

“And,” the intern interrupted – which shocked the rest of the table into silence – “and the demon Crowley wouldn’t let her get hurt. Why would he care about one of the Greek deities?”

“Wait, what?” Dagon demanded. “The demon Crowley wouldn’t let her get hurt?”

“I think you’d best explain yourself, dear,” Michael said, and though the words were gentle, the tone of command was unmistakable.

The intern quailed. “He—he—he—when I t-t-tried to shoot the g-g-god, Dionysus, I m-m-missed—and I would have shot _her_ —b-b-but the demon Crowley p-pushed her down, and that’s how _h-h-he_ …”

“You expect us to believe that a _demon_ sacrificed himself for someone else?” Gabriel scoffed.

The intern’s eyes went huge, but before she could say anything, Beelzebub snapped, “It’zz not unknown. You,” now she was looking at the intern, “what did thizzz ‘redhead’ look like?”

“I—um—er—”

Uriel rose, put a hand on the intern’s shoulder, and crouched at her level. “Show me.”

The intern breathed a sigh of relief and tipped her forehead against Uriel’s. Samael looked away. This sort of mind-melding, mind-sharing – she’d never had the knack of it, like Uriel did, and even if she had … it was uncomfortable to watch.

“Thank you,” Uriel said, which cued Samael that it was all right to look. Uriel was pulling away. She made a complicated gesture, and an apparition appeared in the center of the conference table.

It was the redhead. By the way she was standing and the shocked expression she was wearing, this had to be the intern’s memory of what she had looked like when the four of them had made their initial appearance.

Now, though, now Samael looked at her more closely. How had this girl managed to smite a demon – even one as half-powered and incompetent as Legion? The most noticeable thing about her was that shock of red hair.

But now that Samael was looking … she narrowed her eyes. There _was_ something familiar about her—

Michael gasped. “She looks like—”

“Aziraphale,” Gabriel snarled.

“ _Crowley_ ,” Hastur growled.

Gabriel and Hastur broke off and glared at each other.

But nobody else in the room seemed inclined to let them have their little pissing match. “She doezzz,” Beelzebub buzzed.

“She looks like both of them,” Michael agreed. “And she can smite, like an angel …”

“And the demon Crowley took a bullet for her,” Dagon finished.

“What have those two been _doing_?” Uriel wondered.

“We should find out,” Mephistopheles said.

All of the bosses stared at him – probably doubly shocked because, well, it was _Mephistopheles_. The one demon in Hell who knew how to keep his mouth shut.

But Samael wasn’t shocked, because she knew he’d been speaking to her.

That’s why, even though it went against all of their planning, all of their strategy, Samael found herself nodding.

“Yes,” she agreed. “We should.”

* * *

When Ariadne’s eyes fluttered open, the light was lower and more golden than it had been when they had closed. She pushed herself up, stretched, and wondered where her phone had gone in all the excitement. Or if there was a clock somewhere in this room. How long had she been asleep?

“Feeling any better?”

Ariadne yelped and almost fell off the bed.

But when she turned around—it was just Crowley. Sprawled on an armchair, idly flicking through his phone with his good hand, his bad arm—

Ariadne’s eyes narrowed. “Why is the sling tartan?”

“Aziraphale created it,” Crowley said, as if that explained everything.

… Actually, given the tartan blanket and the tartan armchair, both of which had not been in the room when she had fallen asleep … maybe it did.

“Huh,” Ariadne replied. “How are you feeling?”

“Could ask the same thing of you,” Crowley answered, not even looking up from his phone. Or at least Ariadne didn’t think he had. Bit hard to tell with the sunglasses. “In fact, I already did.”

“Oh. Um.” Ariadne took a deep breath and took stock. Nothing in pain – vision seemed good – no sense of encroaching unconsciousness. Perhaps, at some point, a meal would be a good idea, but she could go a while before eating felt less like an option and more like a need. “I’m fine. So. You?”

Crowley kept his gaze trained on the phone, but his thumb did stop moving. “I suppose I would be much worse if it weren’t for you.”

Now he looked up – sort of – or perhaps it was merely that his sunglasses slid down, showing just where he was looking.

His eyes were – yellow? Golden? And strange. Slit-pupiled, like a cat’s, a little too much iris and just a tad too little sclera.

… Was that why he always wore the sunglasses?

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said softly, and Ariadne forgot her musings about his eyes.

She forced herself to shrug and make her tone as nonchalant as possible. “I could say the same to you.”

Crowley stilled. Almost unnaturally so. “Not the same thing.”

“Oh, right, of course. Because a little …” Ariadne waved a hand. “Spiritual first aid – that’s totally as dangerous as stepping into the path of a speeding bullet.”

“It could be.”

Ariadne blinked. And then …

She told herself she couldn’t help it. The way she crossed her legs underneath her, the elbow that came to rest on a knee and the chin that came to rest on her hand. The way the rest of her mind went quiet, focused on one burning question.

“Why?”

It was just one syllable, but it made Crowley jump. His hand went slack, the phone slipped, and he stared at her.

Ariadne raised an eyebrow.

Something about that made him smirk. “You really are full of questions, aren’t you?”

“I mean, I’ve had a lot of information tossed in my direction these past few days.” With her free hand, she fiddled with the blanket. “I’m just trying to make sense of it all.” She raised an eyebrow. “So are you going to answer, or do I need to interrogate Aziraphale?”

Crowley laughed. Well, it was sort of a laugh, if a laugh could also be a snort. “Believe it or not, I have some experience with …” He shifted, and his gaze dropped back to his phone. But his hand was still. “Let’s say, parental figures who don’t take kindly to questions. Wouldn’t wish that experience on you for the world.”

Ariadne tilted her head to the side and kept her mouth shut.

“I’m a demon.”

There were any number of stupid replies Ariadne could have made to that – things like _You don’t say_ and _I think we’ve gone over this_ and _What’s that got to do with anything?_

She knew they would be stupid, which was why she didn’t say any of them.

“And the thing with being a demon is … there are certain things that are …” Crowley seemed to really see the phone in his hand; his brows furrowed, and he held it up for Ariadne’s inspection. “Part of the hardware, you might say.”

Ariadne forced herself to restrain her response to a nod.

“Demons … hurt. Or have been hurt. Have lost something very precious to them. And …”

“Hurt people hurt people?” Ariadne asked.

Crowley stilled, staring at her as if whatever response he had expected, it wasn’t that. “Yessss. Yes, that would be … that would explain it.” He shifted, slouching in the chair in a way that bent his spine at an even more impossible angle and that probably wasn’t doing his shoulder any favors. “Plus, you add in a hard-learned predisposition to shoot first, ask questions later, and you have a recipe for—well, problems.”

“But you didn’t hurt me,” Ariadne pointed out.

“Apparently whatever your boyfriend put in that wine managed to take the natural defense systems completely offline. Not that I’m complaining, under the circumstances, just pointing it out.”

“You didn’t hurt Aziraphale, though. And you hadn’t had any of Dionysus’s wine then.”

Crowley waved his good hand. “That’s different.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I was awake. Conscious control can overcome some of the basic programming.”

“Ah.”

“Indeed. So.” Crowley tapped on the phone screen in a way that almost looked convincing. “He is your boyfriend, then? Dionysus?”

_Huh? … Oh._

She’d walked right into that one, hadn’t she?

Hard upon the heels of the realization came the walls. Thirty-eight hundred years – give or take a couple decades – of wariness and caution. An endless litany of _don’t trust don’t trust don’t trust_ and _what does he want_ and _figure out his angle_ and _who does he think he is anyway_. Questions she’d learned, the hard way, to get answered before divulging anything remotely personal.

Except …

If she couldn’t trust someone who’d literally taken a bullet for her, who could she trust?

“Boyfriend’s kind of a silly word to use when your age is better measured in centuries than years,” Ariadne said.

“Husband, then?”

There was a hint of – something – swimming underneath the words, but whatever it was, it dove deep and burrowed into the mud before Ariadne could catch more than a glimpse of it.

She snorted. “Ha. No. I mean …” She shifted, bending her spine until she heard it pop. “We’ve talked about it. Thought about it. But. Well. To get married, we’d need Hera’s blessing, and—”

“Hera,” Crowley repeated. Once again, there was something swimming underneath, something Ariadne couldn’t catch.

“Goddess of Marriage,” she explained, if that was what Crowley had wanted explained. “Can’t get married without her say-so – well, unless you _want_ everything to end in tears. Hephaestus and Aphrodite tried that. Didn’t work out so well for them.”

Crowley’s eyebrows arched over his sunglasses.

Ariadne chuckled and shrugged. “Look, if you’re hoping for the gossip and the play-by-play … sorry to disappoint, but all of that was a bit before my time. Anyway. We need Hera’s blessing to get married, and … to make a very _long_ story short, Hera killed Dionysus’s mother before he was born, and then their relationship only got worse from there, so Dionysus? Not keen to ask Hera for anything.”

She sighed, leaning against the pillows. “And I _really_ don’t blame him.”

She’d left the door open for further questions there, and she … was all right with that. Crowley seemed to understand what it was like to have questions and no answers. The least she could do was give him what answers were hers to give.

He didn’t ask them, though – or at least, he didn’t ask the questions Ariadne thought would be obvious. Instead, he asked, “Killed his mother _before_ he was born?”

“Zeus – Dionysus’s father, and the reason Hera went on a rampage – saved Dionysus as his mother was dying and sewed him up in his thigh. Er. Sewed Dionysus up in Zeus’s thigh.”

“Oh.” Crowley’s brows furrowed, then cleared, and he nodded. “Ah, right. I do remember that bit. So that actually happened?”

“Yep.”

“Interesting. So what else actually happened?”

“More than you’d think,” Ariadne answered. “The Muses were usually pretty good about making sure the real story got out there. More or less.”

“Someday, when we’re not all recovering from a shootout and a chase across London – which, by the way, remind me later to have a _chat_ about what you did to my car – someday you and Aziraphale will have to go through one of his books on Greek myths and tell him what the true stories are.”

Ariadne smiled. “Sounds like fun.”

“Good. Although, speaking of true stories … when were you going to tell your—” Crowley hesitated. “You said you didn’t like boyfriend.”

“Partner.”

“Ah. Good word, that. Partner. Anyway. When were you going to tell your partner the true story about …” Crowley gestured to her, then to himself, then made a vague “over there” gesture that presumably was meant to encompass Aziraphale … wherever Aziraphale was.

Then he raised an eyebrow and waited.

Ariadne groaned and let her head thunk against the headboard. “I have no idea – and not for whatever reason you’re thinking.”

“Oh?”

“Zeus …” Ariadne waved her hand through the air. “In his _divine_ wisdom, decreed that none of _us_ were to have any words with any of _you_ unless he said so. And, you know, I wasn’t exactly in the mood to be asking his permission.”

“… Did he,” Crowley murmured. “None of you?”

“Yep.”

“And so you didn’t tell Dionysus because …”

“Zeus can’t blame him for what he doesn’t know anything about.” Ariadne shifted and shrugged. “At least, that’s the theory. He probably could. But, you know. If Dionysus didn’t know … well, he couldn’t dig himself in deeper than I was already digging him. Or try to stop me.”

“I see,” Crowley replied, and maybe Ariadne was imagining things, but she thought he really did. “But I do have to point out that the cat is rather out of the bag on that one.”

“Out of the bag and fleeing across state lines.” Ariadne sighed. “Is that your way of telling me I should probably come clean?”

“Well, _I_ certainly wouldn’t tell you something like that. Encouraging honesty? Quite undemonic of me, that. Of course, if Aziraphale were here, he would most emphatically tell you that honesty is the best policy, etc., etc.”

Ariadne laughed. And wondered. “Where is Aziraphale, anyway?”

“Downstairs. I told him to get something to eat. And fill our hosts in on what led us to end up on their doorstep. Well, the edited version.” He twisted his bad wrist awkwardly – that was the wrist on which he was wearing a large, complicated, and expensive-looking watch. “He’ll probably be back in a few minutes, unless we intercept him downstairs.”

“Ah. So, I take it I should probably face the music with my partner now?”

“I would not be the one to tell you that. However …” Crowley let the sentence linger for a moment. “I am also not _not_ telling you that. Assuming you’re feeling up to it.”

“Yeah, I’m good.” Ariadne tested that proposition by getting off the bed – and found that it was true. “What about you, Mr. I-Literally-Got-Shot-Today?”

“Well, I refuse to admit to being good,” Crowley replied. “But I’m certainly more than capable of going downstairs and holding a mostly civilized conversation.”

Ariadne laughed; Crowley smiled and snapped the fingers of his good hand. The door obligingly swung open. “After you?”

Ariadne glanced at it, took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and went through.

_Well, here goes nothing_ …

* * *

Dionysus heard the creak of the stairs a few seconds before the mortals did – and right about the time Aziraphale did. Given the way the pair of them went still, the mortals seemed to catch onto the fact that people were on the stairs rather faster than they otherwise might have.

Even as Dionysus kept most of his focus trained on the door, he cast a sideways glance at Aziraphale. The angel was … intriguing. He’d done most of the filling in of Anathema and Newt that was required, although there was a rather large omission he was dancing around – that being what in Tartarus’s name Ariadne was doing in the shop in the first place. To say nothing of exactly who their assailants had been and what they had wanted. Still, Dionysus assumed the mortals didn’t need to know any of that …

Although he wouldn’t have minded them finding out, provided he got to find out with them.

And that was another thing. Even as Dionysus knew he was watching the angel, evaluating, he sensed he was being watched and evaluated in turn. It was damned disconcerting. Usually beings like Aziraphale caught one whiff of his relative power compared to theirs and went running in the opposite direction, wings tucked between their legs.

This was one unusually brave – or foolish – angel.

But maybe he’d be able to find out which, because if that was Ariadne coming down the stairs—

It was. And hot on her heels was Crowley.

Dionysus barely glanced at the demon before giving Ariadne a thorough once-over. She looked all right – her clothes were a bit rumpled, there was a pillow mark on her cheek, and her hair was half out of its bun, but all of that was consistent with her having taken an impromptu nap, as Aziraphale had said. (Why she’d _needed_ the nap he’d been a bit vaguer about. Something about “spiritual healing” and “it takes a lot out of you if you’re not used to it.”)

“Ari,” Dionysus said, already half out of his chair.

Ariadne smiled. “Hey.”

And that was all she had the chance to say. “So the sleeping beauties are awake!” Anathema said. “How are you two feeling?”

“Fine,” Ariadne said.

“Peachy,” Crowley said.

“Truly?” Aziraphale asked.

Dionysus shot him a sharp look. The angel was practically radiating worry, and maybe that was natural, given the state Crowley had been in when Dionysus had seen him last, but he wasn’t looking at Crowley. He was looking at Ariadne.

Dionysus began to seriously consider handing out a divine boon to whoever deigned to tell him exactly what was going on here. He would even think it through, _really_ think it through, to avoid another Midas touch debacle.

“Yeah, I’m good.” Ariadne took a deep breath. Then she looked at Dionysus.

“I, um,” her gaze flickered to Anathema and Newt, “I don’t mean to be rude, but …” She turned back to Dionysus. “Can we talk?”

Dionysus didn’t care one bit about being rude. He was up and halfway across the room before “can we” turned into “talk.”

But he stopped before he reached her. And held his hand out.

With a palpable sigh of relief, Ariadne took it. And tightly squeezed it as Dionysus headed for the nearest door outside.

She didn’t let go as they made their way into the backyard, far enough away from the house that they wouldn’t be overheard, nor did she let go when she turned and looked up at him.

She was biting her lip, eyes huge, hand clinging to his with force that would have been painful, had he been mortal. She took a deep breath—

“Hey,” he said, cupping her cheek with his free hand. “It’s ok. Ari, whatever it is, it’s ok.”

Ariadne laughed. “Yeah, you say that now.”

“Ari—”

She held up a hand, and he shut up. “Just—just, hear me out, ok? And then tell me it’s ok.” She took another deep breath. “Before I get into this—I swear to Gaia I was trying to keep you safe and out of trouble.”

“Keep _me_ safe?”

“Your father—”

“Ah. Enough said.”

Ariadne smiled, tiny and weak but real, then closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe. “I just—I had to know, ok? Seeing their wings – it was the first real lead I’d had in centuries. So I had to follow it. Even if your father wouldn’t like it.”

“The first real lead,” Dionysus repeated. “You mean – to find your people?”

Ariadne swallowed hard and nodded.

“Ah.” More than that – well, he shouldn’t say. “And … what did you find?”

Once again, Ariadne bit her lip. Her gaze slipped away from him. And she squeezed his hand.

“Aziraphale and Crowley – they’re – they’re my parents.”

Dionysus’s jaw fell.

In moments like this, it was usually best not to say the first thing that came to mind – so _How?_ was right out. The second thing, _Are you sure?_ , probably wasn’t a good idea, either. The third thing – that might have some promise.

“And you’re ok with that?”

Ariadne looked up, brows knit and head tilted to one side.

“Ari. You do realize you have every right to be furious, right? They abandoned you. Left you on your own for centuries. And—”

She shook her head. “No. That’s not—look, it was—”

“If you say _complicated_ —”

“It wasn’t, really. At least, I don’t think it was. They were trying to keep me safe. Keep all three of us safe.”

“From …?”

“Hell. And Heaven. Apparently neither would have been happy to find out about me.”

Hell and Heaven … Dionysus closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You mean like the people who were shooting at us earlier today?”

“Yep.”

“Well, fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“And now they’re after us.”

Ariadne winced. “Sorry.” And sighed. “I was trying to keep you out of this.”

“Yes, well. A bit late for that. Especially since …”

He hesitated. Was now really the time to tell her that her secret – at least as far as her going to the bookshop was concerned – was already blown wide open?

_Yes._ Nothing good could come of her not knowing.

“… My father already knows.”

“ _What_?”

“You were caught on camera, going into the bookshop,” Dionysus replied. “With ethereal filters and your wings … kind of a dead giveaway.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ariadne swore. “I swear, Dionysus, I was trying—”

“Ari.” Dionysus stroked her cheek and tilted her head up so she could only look into his eyes. “I’m not mad.”

And when the words were out, he realized that they were true. He was quite a lot of things – confused, surprised, and perhaps a bit frustrated at the situation – but not mad. Not at Ariadne.

The angel and the demon, on the other hand …

He’d reserve judgement. Keep an eye on them. Fine, the demon had pushed Ariadne out of the way of a bullet, but … _they_ hadn’t had to watch thirty-seven centuries of abandonment issues play out. _He_ had. So they would have to damn well prove that their intentions had been good, thank you very much.

That being said, most of that could be put firmly in the category of “tomorrow problems.” Today …

“So now what?” Ariadne asked, and there was no hiding the traces of fear and uncertainty that still lurked in her eyes.

“Well, believe it or not, I have a plan for dealing with my father,” Dionysus replied. “As for the rest … your ideas are as good as mine.”

Ariadne’s eyes went wide, and she looked beyond him, back to the cottage.

Dionysus looked over his shoulder. Bowing to the reality of the gathering twilight, someone had turned on a lamp. Dionysus could see straight into the kitchen, where Anathema and Newt were sitting side-by-side, the former chatting animatedly to the table’s other two occupants. Crowley and Aziraphale. Who were sitting quite close together, sides practically touching, hands conveniently hidden by the table.

“Sorry,” Ariadne murmured.

Dionysus turned back to her. “Don’t be,” he said, and once again, he meant it. He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Now come on. Let’s head back in and see if we can’t think our way out of this mess.”

* * *

Hera stood in front of the television and beamed.

The evening news had just concluded, and while the story she was most interested in hadn’t been the top story – there was too much Brexit nonsense for that – it _had_ been prominently featured. Complete with aerial shots and man-on-the-street interviews.

It was a key story on the BBC’s website, too. Hera had told Hermes to make certain of it, and once he did, she’d informed him that he was to make the story go viral. He had rolled his eyes, but with his next breath he had assured her that it would happen.

Let him roll his eyes. Her plan would work.

And to think, she had her least useful stepson to thank for it!

Hera glanced at her phone, opened the BBC app, and beamed again. There it was!

“Vineyard mysteriously takes over Soho bookstore.”

And if this was what the staid, sober, and responsible BBC had to say on the matter, just _imagine_ what the tabloids were saying! Hera very nearly went to find out.

A soft cough broke her reverie. Hera looked over her shoulder. “Athena.”

“Hera.” Her stepdaughter was, as always, stiff and formal. It had nothing to do with her feelings for Hera – whatever bad blood had existed between them had largely been put to rest during the Trojan War, when they had decided to bury their hatchets with each other by planting them in Aphrodite’s skull – it was just how Athena was with everyone. “Here’s the list you wanted.”

Had Hera a shade less inherent dignity or poise, she would have squealed. As it was, she knew quite well that her eyes danced with glee. And she did not care one bit.

Somebody with a sense of humor[2] had written “Signs and Portents” at the top of the list.

Hera dropped to the sofa, patting the cushion next to her. “Sit, dear. I’ll want your opinion on these.”

Athena sat. And said nothing.

Hera scanned the list, snapping a pen into her fingers and scribbling notes beside the different entries. She sighed at Ares’s (show up to a battle in his war chariot with Eris by his side, which was not particularly _creative_ but was probably the best he could do) and nodded at Asclepius’s (cure a whole ward of cancer patients, which showed his thoughts were trending in the right direction). Demeter planned to make several in-person appearances at organic farms the world over; Poseidon would call forth a herd of horses straight from the sea.[3] Apollo had a whole list of music festivals he wanted to bless, and Artemis—

Hera made a strangled noise. “Is she out of her mind?”

“Who?” Athena asked, leaning slightly closer to Hera and reading over her shoulder. “Oh. I thought you wouldn’t be pleased by that.”

“We are trying,” and Hera had to be very, very careful to keep the frustration in her tone under tight control, “to gain the mortals’ _appreciation_. To set ourselves up as a better alternative. Not to convince the wealthiest and most powerful among them that we are enemies to be feared.”

“Yes, I told Artemis you were likely say something along those lines.”

Hera raised an eyebrow at Athena. “And what did she say?”

“That showing up to a major oil industry conference and sending her arrows into a few of the most powerful executives would be a net boon to humanity and they would come around eventually.”

Hera sighed. “When will that girl learn that not all problems can be solved with target practice?” She decisively crossed Artemis’s entry out and moved on.

Aphrodite’s idea – appear at a Pride festival in full Botticelli glory while Eros peppered the counter-protestors with arrows designed to inspire all-consuming and ideally same-sex lust – made Hera smile, at least until she saw the location. “Paris Pride, really?”

“Aphrodite lives in Paris.”

“She _would_ ,” Hera muttered. “I think her talents would be better utilized in a place less friendly to equality.”

“I mentioned that to her. She said she would like to conference with a few other love and fertility deities and split up the work.”

“… Oh.” Well. Hera could hardly argue with that.

She quickly scanned the rest of the list, finding little to object to but scribbling a few ideas for improvements in the margins. When she reached the end—

She frowned.

The list wasn’t long enough.

Hera went back to the beginning and scanned the list again, this time more focused on mental math than the substance of the ideas presented. Obviously neither she nor Zeus would have an entry – Hera hardly needed to tell herself her own planned miracle, and Zeus had been tied up in a conference call with Odin, Dagda, Perun, and Ra since Dionysus’s little stunt had hit the news. She had hoped to have had more time to convince the other pantheons of the wisdom of her strategy, but as Hephaestus would say, one had to strike while the iron was hot. Dionysus wouldn’t have an entry, either, because Hera had specifically told Athena not to contact him to ask for one.

But they weren’t the only ones who were missing … “Did Hades send anything in?”

“He said that mortals never worshipped him much to begin with, and he was always perfectly content with that.”

Hera snorted. He _would_ be. She’d deal with her pigheaded brother later. “Persephone sent in an idea.”

“In her capacity as Goddess of Spring, not Queen of the Underworld.”

“… True,” Hera admitted. “And Thalia and Melpomene both wish to consult with Dionysus first?”

“Comedy and tragedy do arguably fall under his purview.”

That was a good point. “What about Hermes?”

“Zeus has kept him busy most of the afternoon – but when I found him in between calls, he said he’d be a bit more obvious about the next start-up he gave a push to.”

Hera shook her head and jotted that down, even as she told Athena, “He’ll need to tell us specifically what he intends before he does anything. I don’t want him going off half-cocked. Now, let’s see …”

She scanned through the rest of the list.

She frowned.

“Athena.”

Athena folded her hands in her lap, took a deep breath, and said absolutely nothing.

“Where is _your_ miracle?”

Athena frowned. “I don’t have one.”

Hera didn’t ask. She let her glare do the talking for her.

She should have realized that it wouldn’t work. Athena had a mind that appreciated proverbs (having come up with many of them herself), and _better to stay silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt_ was a particular favorite.

Best to change tactics. “And why would that be?”

Athena let her gaze fall to her lap. “I am not convinced of the wisdom of this plan.”

“Your father and I already heard your objections. We decided that this would be our strategy. You do not—”

“You may have heard, but you did not listen!” Now Athena looked up, eyes flashing. “We have not just survived without human worshippers for nearly fifteen centuries. We have thrived!”

“Athena—”

“We have influence still. Plenty of it. Perhaps even more than we had in the old days—”

“We might be influencing more mortals, but that’s just because of population increase. Compared to the Abrahamics—”

“Who are blamed every time something goes wrong,” Athena pointed out. “The demons, if not the angels. What we have now is what Creon was so pleased with at the start of _Oedipus Rex_ : power without responsibility.”

“I cannot imagine that the Goddess of Wisdom would be afraid of a little bit of responsibility.”

“I never said I feared it for myself. But you cannot pretend that we have always used our influence wisely.”

Hera did not bristle. At least, not visibly. Even if that was a dig at her, it was equally a dig at everyone else in the pantheon.

“We have not grown and matured nearly as much as I would like to us to have in our spiritual exile,” Athena said. “Before we bring it to an end, we should be ready to take up our mantle again. I fear we are not.”

“We are _more_ than ready,” Hera snapped. “Or at any rate, we are certainly better equipped for mortal influence and all the responsibility it entails than the Abrahamics. _We_ have no desire to wipe out humanity so we can settle a six-thousand-year-old grudge.”

Athena sighed. “Perhaps, but—”

“And need I remind you that we won’t be doing this alone? Assuming your father is successful, we’ll have virtually every other pantheon that has been pushed to the side by the Abrahamics on _our_ side. Instead of one set of divinities reigning supreme over billions of people, we’ll all have a much larger sphere of influence than we do now and a much more manageable set of followers. Explain to me how that can possibly be worse than the Abrahamics having it all their own way.”

Athena scowled. “And what happens when we no longer have a common enemy to unite us? What happens when the Abrahamics are finally cut down to size and we start eyeing each other’s followers in the hopes of expanding our own trains?”

“We’ll deal with that day when it comes,” Hera replied. “Now, Athena?”

Athena raised an eyebrow.

Hera handed the list back, complete with her scribblings. “Send my feedback to the relevant parties and let me know what they come up with. And when you come back with the next list, I want to see your cleverest idea for a miracle or five to nudge the mortals in our direction. That is an order.”

Athena scowled and snatched the list back with far more ill-humor than was strictly warranted. “As you wish, my lady.” Then she left the room without a further word.

As for Hera … she sat back, frowning. That conversation could have certainly gone better.

But she shook her head. This was their plan. This was the best plan they had. Their first and perhaps only chance to reclaim the followers and influence they’d lost to the Abrahamics and return to their rightful place among the constellation of beings that mortals not just admired but _worshipped_.

And no one – not even Hera’s own excessively wise but also excessively pigheaded stepdaughter – would be allowed to get in the way of that.

* * *

[1] She’d never admit it out loud, but Mephistopheles may have had a point there.

[2] So clearly not Athena.

[3] Hera had no idea what this herd of horses was supposed to accomplish, but it would doubtless be impressive, and that was really all that she wanted to see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
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> Next update should be on Thursday!


	12. No Escape from Reality

Anathema’s kitchen table had not had six chairs when this day had begun. It barely even fit six chairs, even with Aziraphale miracling the table as long as it could go before the kitchen became unnavigable. Yet now it had six chairs, and what’s more, six beings in those chairs.

Anathema’s kitchen table was rectangular, but still, something about the setup put Aziraphale in mind of so many long nights in Wessex, fomenting good often, counseling chastity rather more often than he would have liked,[1] and when all else failed, making plans for war.

He was rather afraid they had already arrived at “when all else failed.”

“All right, so,” Dionysus said. He and Ariadne had sat down thirty seconds ago, and as far as Aziraphale could tell, they had yet to let go of each other’s hands. “In the name of Gaia, Ouranos, and Chaos itself, who were those people at the bookshop, and why were they shooting at us?”

Newt and Anathema were also leaning forward. Aziraphale did not like bringing humans into this, but, well. This _was_ their kitchen, so it would be a bit rude to leave them out.

“Well, in terms of _who_ ,” Aziraphale began, shooting Crowley a _let me start_ glance, “there were two angels and two demons. The angels – well, I’m afraid I’m not sure who the younger one was, the one who shot Crowley, she seems a bit, er, _new_ —”

“Oh, for Someone’s sake,” Crowley interrupted, “don’t tell me I got shot by a bloody intern.”

“ _Intern_?” Newt asked. “There are angel interns?”

“Demon ones too. Just as incompetent as human ones. Possibly worse,” said Crowley. Then he turned back to Aziraphale. “Also, they passed off the job of – whatever the Heaven they were doing – to an _intern_? They think you’re tame enough that an intern can take you on? I am insulted, angel.”

Aziraphale took a deep breath. “Yes, well, hold that thought, dear – because the other angel was Samael. An archangel. Specifically the Archangel of Destruction.”

If Aziraphale had been hoping for a particular reaction, it probably would have been the one he got: wide eyes, sharp indrawn breaths, and stunned silence.

Dionysus was the first to break it. “When you say Archangel of Destruction …”

“Ever hear of Sodom and Gomorrah?” Crowley asked.

“That wasn’t _just_ her, dear—”

Crowley’s hand covered his and quieted Aziraphale quite nicely. “The ten plagues of Egypt? The walls of Jericho tumbling down? And, ah, let’s see, what else—”

“I think we get the picture,” Ariadne murmured.

Dionysus, however, was studying Crowley with narrowed eyes. “I thought you were a demon. How do you know all that?”

“Bad news like Samael gets around.”

“Quite,” Aziraphale said. “If she was rumored to be in the area – well – demons cleared out of it very quickly.” He sighed. “So did humans, if they knew what was good for them.”

“Ok, so that’s the angels,” Ariadne said. “Who were the demons? The Xerox goblin—”

“Xerox goblin?” Anathema repeated, and Crowley snickered.

“He was a weird-looking goth who kept making copies of himself. Pretty creepy. Anyway, him, and, uh … the other one?”

“The goblin is Legion,” Crowley said, “and the other one is Mephistopheles.”

Dionysus looked up. His eyes narrowed. “Mephistopheles?”

“Dionysus—”

“‘Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place, but where we are is hell, and where hell is, there must we ever be’ – _that_ Mephistopheles?”

Crowley flinched, and frankly so did Aziraphale. But Crowley was able to answer. “Yes. From the Faust legend. That was him.”

“Interesting.” Dionysus shifted, tensed, like a cat ready to pounce, and his eyes slowly shifted from brown to burgundy. Ariadne was glaring daggers at him. “Any chance he may have also had some dealings with Kit Marlowe?”

“ _Dionysus_ —”

“Only, you know,” Dionysus stretched in a way that looked lazy but was anything but, “poor Kit – died in a barfight, you know that, right? Except, he was a playwright – under _my_ protection – and, well, a bar is the last place a playwright I’ve taken a shine to should be dying. So I’ve always wondered if perhaps there was some interference there.”

Ariadne threw her elbow on the table and let her head drop into her waiting hand. “It’s been four hundred years.”

“Wasn’t our – well – my former side,” Crowley replied. “Hell liked _Doctor Faustus_. The whole bit where Faustus gets dragged away by demons after appealing to Christ and getting nowhere went over quite well Down Below.”

“Heaven liked the play, too,” Aziraphale said, before Dionysus could follow Crowley’s speech to its logical conclusion. “I mean, it features a demon telling a man ‘no, don’t damn yourself, that’s a terrible idea and I would know.’ Plus the implied lesson about the futility of human knowledge compared with Grace.”

“I _told_ you it was mortal politics,” Ariadne said, but Dionysus, at least, was sitting back with a sigh.

“Right. So. We had squaring off against us one archangel, one angelic intern, and …” Dionysus raised an eyebrow at Crowley. “Where do Legion and Mephistopheles stand in the Hellish pecking order?”

“More pecked upon than pecking,” Crowley replied.

“Huh,” Ariadne murmured, echoing Aziraphale’s thoughts, even as he wondered if _he_ ought to be insulted. He’d been sure that display with the splashing and asking Michael for a rubber duck would be enough to win Crowley a bit of peace.

“So that answers the first question – who they were – now the next – why were they shooting at us?” Dionysus asked.

Once again, Crowley and Aziraphale exchanged a glance. But there was really no help for it. If now wasn’t the time to come clean, when would there be a time?

This time Crowley started. “Well … based on what they said … I’m guessing they knew we went … well, they knew we left Earth, even if they didn’t know where we went.”

“Because we went to the Underworld, you see,” Aziraphale said. “To …” He looked at Ariadne. “Well, to see if we could find out a bit more about you, dear.”

“ _Me_?” Ariadne asked.

Before she could say more than that, Crowley hurried on. “We wanted to confirm a couple things. Because we were given your name, and a promise of contact information …” Crowley’s attention shifted, infinitesimally, away from Ariadne and toward Dionysus. “By Hera.”

If Crowley had been hoping for a reaction, he would not be disappointed.

“ _Hera_?!” Dionysus shouted, springing to his feet. “Hera came to you?”

“Yep,” Crowley said.

Dionysus began to pace, and – well, whatever he said next was not in a language Aziraphale understood, probably that Olympian dialect again. It was also probably not language fit for polite company, a surmise which Ariadne confirmed when she said, thankfully in English, “Sweetie, if you turn anyone’s hair black—”

Dionysus spun to face her. “She’s playing at something.”

“Yes. Obviously.”

“But _what_?” Now Dionysus rounded on Crowley and Aziraphale. “Did she say what she wanted from you?”

“She, er, refused to talk terms,” Aziraphale said. “I believe—”

“Oh, fantastic. Fantastic. We’re in Hera’s debt and we don’t even know what she wants.”

“No, we’re not,” Crowley replied. “At least Aziraphale and I aren’t. All we got from her was a first name and a photo, and she gave us those as bait.”

“And I found my way to them _myself_ ,” Ariadne added. “We don’t owe her anything.”

“So now we’ve thwarted her. Even better!”

“Sorry,” Newt said, “please excuse the dumb human here, but—why is it so bad that Hera is involved?”

“Newt—” Anathema started, but never got a chance to finish, because Dionysus rounded on him.

“Hera,” Dionysus said, and his voice was low and very, very serious, “is one of the most jealous, vindictive goddesses in any pantheon. She is the sort of goddess who sends a pair of snakes to murder an infant. She’s the sort of goddess who curses a pregnant woman to be unable to give birth on dry land or an island. Oh, and speaking of pregnant women, Hera is the sort of goddess who tricks one into getting herself _burned to ash_ by her baby’s father.”

Ariadne made a soothing noise and took Dionysus’s hand – a hand which Dionysus seemed to cling to.

“And that is barely even scratching the surface of what she’s done,” Dionysus concluded, throwing himself back into his chair, “so if she decides she’s going to chase after whatever she thinks she’s owed or whatever she wanted to gain? You two,” he pointed at Anathema and Newt, “are to get away. _Far_ away.”

Anathema sat up straighter. “Now hold on a second—”

“I am not joking,” Dionysus said. “You are mortal. Hera is ruthless. And Hera doesn’t believe in innocent bystanders. Ask Megara and her children if you don’t believe me.”

“Megara? From the Disney movie?” asked Anathema.

“No,” Dionysus said. “From Thebes. Megara was the wife of Heracles, until Hera drove Heracles mad and he murdered her. And their children.”

Anathema’s jaw fell and Newt choked, but Aziraphale watched Ariadne. Ariadne was frowning, eyes on Dionysus, and not saying a word.

Aziraphale could perhaps be excused for assuming that was not a good sign.

“So, wonderful,” Crowley “Hell’s after us. Heaven’s after us. Hera may or may not be after us. Now what?”

Dionysus took a deep breath—

But Ariadne was the one who sat up straight and spoke. “The Underworld. You said you were in the Underworld. Who did you talk to down there?”

“A few people,” Aziraphale said. “Hypnos; a, er, charming fellow named Briareus; Hades – but mostly Persephone.”

Ariadne’s eyes went wide, and she was—smiling? Even Dionysus looked heartened – surprised, but heartened.

He glanced at Ariadne. “You think …?”

“I’ll call her. I’ll call her right—” Ariadne patted herself down and somehow – Aziraphale was not sure how, but suspected a miracle – produced a slim mobile. “Oh, yikes.”

“Yikes?” Dionysus asked.

Ariadne turned the phone toward Dionysus. “I’m not calling her now.”

“Oh. Yikes.”

“Why?” Anathema asked. “What’s yikes?”

Ariadne turned the phone to Anathema, who blinked at the time displayed on it. “Oh, _yikes_.”

“You know,” Newt said, “maybe—maybe we all ought to get some rest. I know _you_ have all had a busy day …”

Aziraphale was not normally in the habit of sleeping, but there were exceptions to every rule. “We should probably see if there’s a hotel room to be had,” he nudged Crowley.

“What? Don’t be ridiculous,” Anathema said. “You’re all staying here. I’ve got plenty of room. This place has three bedrooms.”

“We cannot trespass upon your hospitality like that,” Dionysus said.

“Sure you can. Or rather, you’re not. If angels, demons, or angry Greek goddesses show up, I want someone around who can handle them while Newt and I make a break for it.”

“Ah,” Dionysus said, and grinned.

“Wards, then,” Crowley said, getting up. “If only so we know to tell you two to make a break for it.”

“I’ve got wards—”

“We’ll have better ones,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale nodded.

“ _Much_ better ones,” Dionysus added, and Aziraphale saw no reason to doubt that.

“So, it’s settled then,” Aziraphale said. “Wards – then rest – and we keep planning in the morning.”

As the four non-humans headed outside to start laying the wards, Aziraphale reflected that it wasn’t the most thorough or comprehensive battle plan he’d ever been part of. But it was also far from the worst, and after the day they’d had?

That was more than enough to be getting on with.

* * *

Of course as soon as things got interesting, Mephistopheles, Legion, and the intern were kicked out. Beelzebub had buzzed about Mephistopheles and Legion having work to do; Michael had told the intern that the infirmary would probably want to have another look at her. And that had been that.

Mephistopheles had to work hard to school an expression of disappointment onto his face.

It wasn’t that he _didn’t_ want to know what was being done and said – if he had the ability to make copies of himself like Legion, he would have liked to leave a second Mephistopheles in that meeting. But Samael was still in there, and that was almost as good. Which meant that Mephistopheles was free to go off and do something useful.

Like see if he could find anything about the redhead.

Mephistopheles, after all, hadn’t _mentioned_ that the only reason why he and Samael had found the god to trail was because they’d been trailing the redhead first. He also hadn’t gone into detail about the way the people in the bookshop had been standing or the logical inferences to draw from the things they’d said. Of course Legion or the intern could have mentioned those things, but they’d been kicked out. Samael could, too, but she wouldn’t.

So when all was said and done, Mephistopheles commiserated with Legion about being left out of the really interesting part for as long as it was polite, and then as soon as it wasn’t, he was out of the elevator and hurrying to the Cabinets.

The Cabinets were a particularly unpleasant part of Hell.[2] Even damper, smellier, and more bloody uncomfortable than the rest, the Cabinets managed to pile on the creepy by being just row after row of beige filing cabinets. The sort of things that managed to look unassuming while at the same time striking a tendril of fear down the spine of every office worker. Plus, you couldn’t open any of the drawers without creating an infernal racket that echoed through all the exposed pipes along the walls. And you got a little static shock every time you touched a part of the filing cabinets that was metal (which was to say, every time you touched the cabinets).

But the Cabinets held one of the greatest treasures of Hell: information. So Mephistopheles would brave their unpleasantness every time if it meant getting what he wanted.

There were some parts of the Cabinets that were open to all; Mephistopheles sailed right past those. What he needed would be in the deeper parts of the archive, the parts locked behind doors with signs reading, _Authorized Personnel Only – This Means Not You!_[3]

Of course, this being Hell, the signs were only the first line of defense – the one meant to weed out the least powerful and most cautious. They’d worked for a time on Mephistopheles, too, at least until he had watched and listened and learned to work his way past the tricks.

Now, those doors opened for him as easily as if he had a key – a particularly stubborn key, one that he never put in the door the right way around on the first try and that was on a whole keyring of similar-looking keys to boot, so he’d spend quite five minutes fumbling before finally getting the blessed thing open. But a key all the same.

There were five such doors, and none of them held Mephistopheles back for long. Because that was the thing about Hell. Heaven could blather on about how all demons were intrinsically evil, but they hadn’t been tossed out for being _evil_ , because evil hadn’t existed until they’d knocked around in Hell long enough to invent it. They’d been tossed out because they danced to the beats of their own drummers. Dared to have opinions. Refused to conform. _Disobeyed_.[4] The jackasses on the Dark Council might blather on about how they expected absolute obedience or else, but Hell? Hell knew better. If you could work your way past the locks and the traps, then you were authorized personnel, and bless anyone who said otherwise.

And once Mephistopheles opened the final door, it was easy enough to find what he was looking for. Hell’s information organization system might have been infernal, but it wasn’t barbaric. Once you got used to the logic, it was child’s play to locate whatever you needed.

So it wasn’t long before Mephistopheles was standing in front of the wine god’s filing cabinet.

And he had an entire filing cabinet. Hell kept notes on everything it observed – and for many centuries it had keenly observed all the gods Heaven had eventually displaced, searching for potential allies. Even when Hell had been told, usually politely, to bugger off, they kept observing. Just in case things changed.

It was a lucky thing that they did …

Mephistopheles opened the top drawer, winced at the rattle that echoed through the vaulted room, and got to work.

_Oh …_

_Oh, HELLO._

He barely even had to peek into the first few folders before he’d hit the jackpot. Before long, he had a whole stack of files that could be quite helpful, everything from modern surveillance photos to ancient papyrus reports. There was even more where that came from, but this was plenty to be getting on with. The last thing he needed to deal with was someone who actually was authorized (in the Dark Council’s eyes) coming in and asking just what the Heaven he thought he was doing.

Mephistopheles brought his stack to the ancient, stained copy machine and pressed buttons until the inevitable error messages went away.[5] Someone must have been smiling upon him, for the machine was almost cooperative. He only had to sort out three paper jams and weed out half-a-dozen photocopied bare bottoms before getting his copies.[6] Then there was nothing left to do but put the originals back precisely where he’d found them and head back up to the fifth floor.

It was, of course, far from guaranteed that Samael would still be there. But they couldn’t meet on Earth until Mephistopheles got another corporation – not unless he wanted to possess some human, and generally that was more trouble than it was worth – and anyway, Samael didn’t have a corporation yet, either. Probably.

He would just have to go up there and hope he’d be able to catch Samael before she went back up to Heaven.

He took the stairs because he knew he wouldn’t meet Beelzebub, Dagon, or Hastur that way.[7] And that was his second bit of luck. When he’d gotten to the fourth floor, he heard footsteps above him, craned his neck to look up—

Samael!

And she was alone!

“Samael!” he hissed, keeping his voice low just in case the sound carried.

Samael jumped, looked down, and grinned.

“Well, well, well. And here I was just wondering how I’d get ahold of you.” Samael waited on the landing for Mephistopheles. “You shouldn’t have come up here, though.”

“Eh, I could have thought of an excuse. Besides.” He flashed a smile and held up the stack of photocopies. “I found things.”

“Things?” Samael asked, even as she opened the door, scanned the corridor, and all-but-dragged Mephistopheles into the nearest conference room.

“Yep. About the redhead.” He let the pile of copies fall on the table with a pleasing _thunk_. “And this isn’t even everything. Just something to get us started.”

Samael’s eyebrows arched, but she slid into a chair and patted the one next to her. Mephistopheles took it and watched Samael as she went through the stack.

“Ariadne,” Samael said first, her eyes on the topmost file. “You’re sure that’s her name?”

In answer, Mephistopheles flipped the page over and gestured to the surveillance photo. It hadn’t been a good photo to begin with, and after going through Hell’s black-and-white copy machine, it was worse, but the redhead was recognizable. “We’ve got plenty of photos of her – this is just the only one I bothered to copy.”

“Huh,” Samael murmured. “So why do I know that name?”

“Go to the last page.”

Samael raised an eyebrow at him.

“It’s in reverse chronological order. We haven’t actually got files on her, I don’t think … but, well. she shows up quite a bit in the wine god’s files.”

“Well, well, well,” Samael said as she thumbed through the printouts. She came to the last one.

Mephistopheles bit his lip and found himself hoping – praying, almost – that it was legible. Papyrus on the copy machine was always a crapshoot—

But Samael was frowning, and not the I-can’t-read-this frown of a frustrated angel. “Mephistopheles?”

“Yes?”

“This reads like it’s the first intel report on Dionysus.”

“Could be. It was one of the oldest reports in his file.”

“And it says,” Samael cleared her throat, “‘The god travels with a harem of followers, called Maenads, but among them his favorite is a human woman/demigoddess called Ariadne, originally from Crete.’”

“If you skip a couple paragraphs, there’s a short summary of what we were able to find out about—”

“How old is this report?”

Mephistopheles blinked. “Um …” Dates were always a nightmare, especially going that far back. While Heaven had counted down from the beginning and then after the birth of the Christ started counting up, Hell had used whatever dating system was current among the humans at the time. “I think – somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-five hundred years ago? I could be off by a century or two …”

Samael stared at the pile of printouts and blinked. “Thirty-five hundred years.”

“Roughly.”

“So that blows one theory out of the water,” Samael murmured.

Mephistopheles raised an eyebrow at her.

Samael pursed her lips together and cast a glance over her shoulder, even though nobody could possibly be listening in. “We were wondering if the redhead – if she was … well. Like the Nephilim.”

Mephistopheles shuddered. He remembered the Nephilim. They’d been so damned weird – and destructive – that the Almighty had had to send a flood to destroy them all.[8] It had been one of the few decisions made by the Almighty that Mephistopheles had seen no reason to disagree with.

“But she can’t be,” Samael went on, “because there’s no way we could have missed a Nephilim or Nephilim-like being for thirty-five hundred years.”

“She was in Greece for a lot of those years. And, well. You _remember_ what they were like.”

“Even the Greeks knew trouble when they saw it. Why d’you think the gods went around making so many demigods? Someone had to deal with all the monsters.”

Remembering the stories that had come out of Greece, Mephistopheles could see Samael’s point.

“But why would she be like the Nephilim, anyway?” Mephistopheles asked.

“Cross-breed. Or rather cross-species mix. _That_ never ends well.”

Mephistopheles frowned. “… Is she?”

Samael blinked at him. “She’s half-angel, half-demon. What else would she be?”

“But, but that’s the thing,” Mephistopheles pointed out. “Demons aren’t like humans, made from the dust with life breathed into them. We’re—we used to be angels, once.”

Samael’s eyes went wide. And she looked back down at the papers in front of her.

“You … have a point.” She frowned. “But she’s definitely not an angel.”

“Not a demon, either.”

“So some kind of mix.”

“Right – but there’s a difference between a mutt and a mule. You know?”

Samael looked puzzled for a moment, and Mephistopheles wondered if maybe she didn’t know. He’d never seen Samael express any sort of interest in animals.

Then her face cleared; she nodded and turned back to the files in front of her. “Still. Should probably get through this first, before we get sidetracked with a thousand questions. So let’s …”

She turned over the paper and blinked. “Mephistopheles, why—”

“Sorry!” Mephistopheles snatched the offending page, balled it up and tossed it the direction of the nearest trash can. “Though I got them all.”

Samael raised an eyebrow. “Do I want to know?”

“No. No, you really don’t.”

“Fair enough.”

And with that, Samael nodded once, and they both turned back to reading.

After all, they had quite a bit of material to get through before one or both of them were likely to be missed.

* * *

According to Dionysus’s phone, it was getting on for four in the morning. He knew this because he was staring at it, mindlessly scrolling through Twitter. And he was doing that because he couldn’t sleep.

Ariadne was curled up in the crook of his arm, out cold. Dionysus wasn’t sure whether to envy her or worry about her. Ariadne slept – they both did, they might not need to, but they’d both formed the habit as children and never quite gotten out of it – but she usually didn’t sleep twice in one day.

Then again, they usually didn’t have days like this one. Up at an ungodly hour – getting shot at – exploding a car – some sort of otherworldly healing Dionysus still hadn’t had explained to him – highly emotional confession – and then, after all that, an hour tailing an angel and a demon like a duckling as they laid wards around the cottage.

Dionysus had covertly watched her as much as he was able between laying his own wards. Even after knowing her so long, he hadn’t been able to tell what drew her more – the lure of learning something new, a bit of magic that wouldn’t need a million workarounds, or the lure of having finally found her family.

The phone gave off just enough light for Dionysus to see her face. Ariadne never looked her best asleep, features slack, drooling, hair sprouting new snarls every time she moved a fraction of an inch. But right now, she looked so peaceful, contentment rolling off her in waves—

The wards Dionysus had laid buzzed. That would have been alarming enough. His phone buzzed at the same time, which didn’t help.

Worst of all, though, was the text message making the phone buzz.

**Come out come out wherever you are!**

Dionysus nearly started cursing a blue streak.

But he didn’t, because Ariadne was stirring. “Di’nysus? Whazzat?”

“Nothing, sweetheart.” A lie, but a harmless one. Hopefully. “Just my phone. Go back to sleep.”

“Oh.” Ariadne yawned, then burrowed back under the covers and dropped back to sleep.

Dionysus waited, straining every one of his senses.

But there were no sounds from the other guest bedroom, no hint of hall light spilled under the door, not even another buzz from the wards.

His phone was another story.

**I know you’re in there!**

_Fuck._ Clearly, there was no getting out of this one.

As carefully as he could, Dionysus extricated himself from Ariadne and the bed. He dressed himself with a wave of his hand and slipped out the bedroom door. Then he padded barefoot down the stairs and out the door.

The night air hit him with enough force to make him shiver and plunge his hands into his pockets. Damn English weather. He missed LA, warm sunup to sunup.

But he didn’t have time to be cold, so he hurried down the path to the garden gate and beyond.

The Bentley was still parked on the road, guarded by demonic wards thick enough and strong enough to make even Dionysus give it a wide berth. Parked behind it was a motorcycle. And perched on the motorcycle was a goddess.

The goddess looked up from her phone and huffed. “ _Finally_ ,” she said, shoving the phone into the pocket of her leather jacket. “Took you long enough, thigh-baby.”

“Eris,” Dionysus said. “What do you want?”

She pouted. “Aww, come on. Haven’t you got something at least a little nicer for your favorite older sister?”

“You are not my favorite older sister.”

“Oh please. Who else would it be?” Eris pillowed her arms on the handlebars of the bike and blinked up at Dionysus. “Don’t tell me it’s Athena. The stick you’ve got up your butt has never gone _that_ far up.”

Dionysus rolled his eyes and didn’t take the bait. “I got out of bed for this. What do you _want_ , Eris?”

“Oh, lots of things! A drone, a hoverboard – a real one, a Marty McFly one, ‘cause I already have one of the ones that catch fire – my very own nuclear warhead—”

Well, now Dionysus wasn’t going to sleep for the next week.

“—For everyone to stop telling me I need therapy, a pony—”

“A _pony_?” Dionysus asked.

“When someone asks you what you want, you have to say a pony. It’s traditional! Anyway. But what I’d _really_ like, right now,” Eris tilted her head and grinned up at him, “is for you to tell me what you’re doing in Tadfield, at the house of people Father specifically said we weren’t supposed to be talking to.”

Dionysus set his shoulders and glared. “It’s none of your business.”[9]

“So what? I want to know!”

“The Rolling Stones had a song about getting what you want,” Dionysus replied. “It was a bit of a hit. Involved a boys’ choir. I’m sure you’ve heard it.”

“Oh please. I wouldn’t let Apollo put me off with that, you think I’m going to let _you_ quote a song at me?”

_It was worth a try,_ Dionysus thought.

“Besides, I don’t go around making movies. Or plays. Or wine, for that matter. So I don’t see where you get off going around making trouble.”

There was absolutely nothing Dionysus could say that Eris wouldn’t take, twist, and use against him, so he said nothing.

“I mean, if you’re going to pull that kind of bullshit,” Eris went on, as if she hadn’t been expecting a reply – which she very well might not have been – “the least you can do is let me know what’s up and count me in, because—”

Dionysus’s heart dropped. “No.”

“No? No what?”

“No fucking way! You—” Dionysus bit the rest of that sentence back, hard, because the last thing he needed to be doing right now was telling Eris anything remotely adjacent to the truth.

_You are a walking disaster,_ he wanted to say. _Everything you touch blows up spectacularly. The last time you got invited to a wedding, a city fell._

Except …

Eris hadn’t been invited to that wedding, had she?[10] She’d been specifically excluded. De-invited from not just that wedding but every wedding by divine decree of Hera after The Incident at Hades and Persephone’s wedding.

And look how trying to keep Eris from making trouble at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis had turned out …

What was it that Hermes had said the first time Dionysus asked him what Eris was doing at a family meeting? _“Pater realized it was way better to have her inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in. And Hera agreed. Which tells us all we need to know, really.”_

“Y’know, thigh-baby,” Eris said, resting her chin on one hand and beaming up at him, “if I didn’t know better, I’d say you looked like you just got hit with a clue-by-four.”

Dionysus took a deep breath. He crossed his arms, tucking hands into armpits as if the reason why he was trembling was simply the temperature. “Let’s start with one thing. This trouble? It isn’t about me. I didn’t go looking for it. I’m only—”

He hesitated. But there was no getting around this, not if he wanted to make sure Eris was in the tent with the urine going in the correct direction. “It’s because of Ari that I’m in this.”

Eris blinked. “Ari? Ariadne? Your girlfriend Ariadne? Who’s never set one little toe over any line Father cared to draw?”

_Because Father never put the line between her and anywhere she wanted to go._

“Yes. And if anything – _anything_ – happens to her because you wanted to watch the world burn, I will find the deepest, darkest pit Tartarus has to offer, and I will fling you into it myself.”

Eris rolled her eyes. “Uh huh. Sure. And if I buy that one, do you have a bridge in Brooklyn—”

“Do I need to swear it by the Styx?” Dionysus asked.

Even just saying those words – not actually doing it – Dionysus felt the frisson of power. Icy fingers reaching out, ready to bind him to his words, whatever those words might be. It made him shudder, and he didn’t care that Eris saw.

Eris’s jaw fell; she must have felt it too. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would,” Dionysus said, and whether she had meant that he wouldn’t fling her into Tartarus or that he wouldn’t swear it didn’t matter. The answer was the same.

She leaned back. “You _never_ swear on the Styx.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“Well, shit.” Eris ran a hand through her hair and blinked up at him through her lashes. “What in Tartarus has Ariadne gotten herself into that you’re willing to do _that_ to make sure it doesn’t blow up in her face?”

“To make sure _you_ don’t blow up in her face,” Dionysus corrected, “and, well …”

He didn’t want to do this. Even if Eris seemed likely to behave. She was, if not _the_ last person he wanted to know what was going with Ariadne, pretty damn close to the bottom of the list. But here she was, and the only thing worse than having her on their side was not having her on their side.

So Dionysus took a deep breath and murmured a quick prayer to Gaia, Chaos, or any other primordial force that cared to listen (and not hate him on sight for reasons of ancestry).

And then he told her. 

* * *

[1] He’d been disturbingly successful with Sir Bors, but he’d had no luck whatsoever with Lancelot or Guinevere.

[2] Which was saying something.

[3] Mephistopheles always wondered whether the signs were magically attuned to the demons looking at it, displaying the correct message for the viewer, or whether they said that sort of thing to everyone. He’d never been brave enough to ask a lower-ranked demon and find out.

[4] And, in one memorable case, asked questions.

[5] Every demon had their own way of dealing with the ubiquitous copy machine errors. Some shouted. Some kicked the machines. Some shouted _and_ kicked the machines. The one thing absolutely no one did was look up the error codes and fix whatever the problem was.

[6] No one was quite sure who had cursed the copy machines to spit out random images of demons’ bottoms, but Mephistopheles suspected the demon Crowley.

[7] Taking the stairs was perilously close to being virtuous, after all.

[8] Along with most of humanity, or at least the humans who lived around the Mediterranean, but who was counting?

[9] You might be wondering why Dionysus didn’t ask Eris how she knew where he was. There were two reasons for this. The first was that it was a useless question; Eris always knew where and how to find trouble. The second was that not asking never failed to annoy Eris.

[10] Dionysus had been. There were relatively few things that the Greek and Abrahamic divinities agreed upon, but “weddings need lots of wine” was one of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
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> 
> Next update should be on Saturday!


	13. Something’s Gonna Shatter Somewhere

Since Anathema and Newt had not planned on having their home invaded by four not-strictly-human beings, the selections for breakfast were … sparse. “No worries,” Anathema said, throwing a jacket over her shoulders. “There’s a pretty good café on the main street—”

“ _High_ street,” Newt corrected.

Anathema caught Ariadne’s and Dionysus’s eyes and winked. “Although you might want to grab a cup of coffee before you go. I’m not sure they quite understand what good coffee is over there.”

“Says the woman who can barely brew a cup of tea to save her life,” Newt replied as they all stepped out the front door.

“Pfft. You say that like it’s hard. All you have to do is put some water in a mug, put the mug in the microwave—”

“I’m sorry, the _what_?” Aziraphale sputtered with enough indignation that Ariadne had to bite back a laugh.

She glanced up at Dionysus, to see if he found it as funny as she did—

Dionysus wasn’t looking at her. Wasn’t looking at any of them. Was staring at his feet as they hiked through the summer-tall grass on the side of the road, with the sort of scowl that said he thought he was unobserved.

Ariadne frowned. He’d been out of sorts ever since they – or, well, _she_ – had woken up. She couldn’t be sure he had slept. Ariadne bumped her hip against his, raising an eyebrow when he jumped and looked at her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, low enough not to be heard by anyone but him.

Dionysus glanced sidelong at their companions – Anathema, Newt, and Aziraphale continuing to argue over tea and Crowley trying very hard not to laugh at the three – and shook his head. “After breakfast. There are some things you need to face on a full stomach.”

Ariadne’s eyebrows arched. “About how worried should I be?”

“Well …” Dionysus ran a hand through his hair, looked around, and sighed. “Let’s put it at DEFCON 3.”

“We’re not already at DEFCON 3?”

“DEFCON 2 and a half, then.”

_Fantastic._

She didn’t ask more, though she did slip an arm through Dionysus’s and didn’t pull away as they walked into the village proper.

She wondered, vaguely, what kind of picture they made: the goth-inspired witch, the washed-up rocker in sunglasses and a tartan sling, the nineteenth-century shopkeeper, the tall and tanned young man with a hint of wildness in his eyes, the barely-put-together redhead, and Newt the token normal. Although Newt probably didn’t qualify as normal when he was walking with them.

She was taken enough by these musings that she barely noticed the motorcycle parked in front of the little café Anathema led them to.

She probably should have. They’d just made it inside when an awfully familiar voice rang through the tiny space.

“Thigh-baby! And Ari!”

“Oh, _no_ ,” Dionysus moaned.

_What the—_

Ariadne couldn’t complete the thought before Eris pinballed into her pulled her into—

It wasn’t a hug. More like a wrestler’s hold, meant to immobilize and stun. Its only virtue was that it was over quickly.

“Look at you!” Eris grinned, holding Ariadne at an arm’s length. Ariadne had enough time to notice, dazed, that Eris was wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Lucille Ball sticking her tongue out before Eris started speaking again. “All grown up and causing trouble! I am _so_ proud.”

“ _Eris_ ,” Dionysus growled.

“And these must be your parents!” Eris squealed. “You have no idea how long she’s been looking for you. Probably ever since Dionysus first brought her up to Olympus and Athena did some proto-DNA testing and Ari found out the hard way that she was adopted—”

“ _Eris_!”

“What?”

The onslaught ended, or at least paused, Ariadne dared to look at Aziraphale and Crowley. Aziraphale’s jaw had fallen, while Crowley had shifted his shades down enough to peer at Eris over them. “Do we … know you?”

“You should,” Eris sniffed. “Thigh-baby said he was going to warn you.”

“Full stomach?” Ariadne heard herself ask.

Dionysus ran a hand down his face. “You weren’t supposed to come see us until I called you.”

“Come see _you_?” Eris asked. “I’m just here for breakfast! Not my fault you showed up. What, I’m supposed to pretend I don’t know my own brother?”

“Brother?” Newt asked.

“Wow,” Eris said, glaring at Dionysus, “you really didn’t tell them anything, did you?” But she turned to grin at the rest of them. “But you know what? Whatever! Hi, I’m Eris, Goddess of Strife and Discord, what are _your_ names?”

“… I think I’m going to need something stronger than coffee,” Anathema said.

“Oh, skip the coffee,” Eris said. “I tried it. And hexed the coffee machine. Broke a really hard-to-find part, too. It’ll take at least three weeks to ship a replacement in.”

As if to prove her words, Eris gestured to the counter, where a harassed-looking older woman was on the phone, not paying a lick of attention to them but nonetheless looking more horrified by the second.

Dionysus groaned and waved his hand at the coffee machine, which instantly perked to life and spat out three cups of coffee. “Could you at least _try_ to behave?”

“Nope!”

It was at that point Ariadne’s brain shut off. It was the only way to handle Eris. Dealing with her was like getting caught in a rip tide. Your best hope was to swim parallel to the shore and hope the tide found someone else to harass before you were swept out to sea.

So she made her way to the counter, ordered a coffee and the first pastry she saw, handed over her credit card and sent a bit of persuasion the barista’s way that would ensure that everything that was ordered got put on her card. She’d planned on treating Anathema and Newt anyway, but if they were siccing Eris on unsuspecting divinities and mortals, the least Ariadne could do was pay for their breakfast.

Breakfast purchased, Ariadne turned back to the café proper … to find that Eris had shoved three tables together, so there’d be room for all six of them to eat with her. And Eris had seated herself right in the middle, where she could grin at Ariadne and wave her over.

Well. Fantastic. Still, Ariadne sat next to her, because someone had to, and if Dionysus took Eris’s other side, they could at least hope to contain the blast radius.

Dionysus seemed to be thinking the same thing, for he took the other chair next to Eris. Aziraphale came to the table next, worried gaze fixed on Ariadne, and sat across from her. Crowley took the seat next to Aziraphale, putting him across from Eris. That left Newt to take the chair on the end, next to Dionysus, when the latter kicked it out for him and Anathema to take the one chair left, next to Crowley.

Ariadne sipped her coffee (just as bad as Eris had promised) and crumbled the pastry in the hopes that no one would notice that she wasn’t eating it.

She didn’t say much, which was fine, because Eris in a chatty mood could talk enough for three people. And since Anathema actually came out and asked whether Eris had really started the Trojan War (“What?” she asked when Ariadne and Dionysus stared at her, “when’s the next time I’ll get a chance to quiz a goddess?”), Eris was in quite the chatty mood. The Trojan War was only the start of her exploits, and she was only too happy to share some of the highlights.[1]

Crowley, Ariadne noticed, looked _very_ interested as Eris talked. That was only mildly terrifying.

Not that Ariadne had long to bask in the mild terror. She’d barely sipped her coffee before Eris was poking her in the ribs. “Hey! I heard you blew up a _car_ yesterday! I want to know more about that.”

“Um …” Ariadne started.

“Oh, that—that wasn’t particularly interesting,” Aziraphale said. “I mean, just a few stray miracles, and, well—”

“It was like something out of a bad action movie, from what I’ve heard,” Anathema said, winking at Ariadne. “You know – the kind that’s all explosion, no brain? You’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all?”

Dionysus took a quick sip of coffee, probably to hide a snicker.

“You know what _I_ want to know about?” Anathema went on, leaning forward. “Every couple has a meet cute story, right? I mean – Newt and I met while the world was literally ending, those two,” she tilted her chin at Aziraphale and Crowley, “met while it was beginning – so what about you two? What’s your story?” Anathema asked.

And she meant well. That was as plain as the glasses on her face. But—

Ariadne’s throat went dry, and she looked around the table. Newt looked politely inquiring; Dionysus had thrown her a questioning glance; and Aziraphale and Crowley—

Oh, there was _interest_ there, a casual lean on Crowley’s part, a tilt of the chin and a raise of the eyebrows, a nonverbal _Oh?_ from Aziraphale. And Ariadne—

She couldn’t talk about this. Not now. Not when she’d barely even known Aziraphale and Crowley two days. It wasn’t Dionysus that she didn’t want to talk about – she’d happily talk about him all day – it was the _everything else_ that went into how they met.

Ariadne gulped down some coffee, trying to think of something, anything, to put Anathema off.

A mistake. Eris took advantage of that pause to lean conspiratorially toward Anathema. “She probably doesn’t want to talk about it,” she not-whispered, “because she and thigh-baby only met when Ariadne’s ex-boyfriend dumped her on Naxos—”

Ariadne slammed her coffee cup down.

“ _Dumped_ me?” Ariadne hissed.

Dionysus’s eyes had gone very wide. And Eris looked surprised. “Well, he—”

“No, no. You’re not getting out of this that easily. You want to tell the story, Eris? Tell whole story.”

She twisted in her chair, the better to glare at Eris. “First – he didn’t dump me. Oh, he _put me ashore_ at Naxos, but that was only because I’d made myself the world’s worst kidnapping victim. And if you’re going to call that asshole anything, instead of calling him my ex-boyfriend, why don’t you call him what he was – the bastard Athenian demigod who pretended he was in love with me so he could _trick_ me and _use_ me to _murder my brother_!”

She didn’t realize that she had gotten louder with every word until she was practically shouting at the end. And when she looked up, every mortal in the café was staring at her, whatever bubble that was protecting them from mundane notice having well and truly popped.

_Oh … shit …_

Ariadne didn’t dare look across the table. “I—I need some air,” she stammered. And practically ran from the café.

* * *

So clearly Eris had tap-danced on some trauma there, Ariadne was on the run, and everyone in the café was now staring. Wonderful.

The last bit, though, Crowley could fix.

“Oi! As you bloody well were!” Crowley said, snapping the fingers of his good hand, and the humans in the café went back to their coffees[2] and their breakfasts as if no one had been practically shouting about murdered brothers before running out of the café like the hounds of Hell were after her.[3]

“I should,” Aziraphale said, and didn’t actually say what he should do, but the way he got up (leaving his tea and croissant behind) and hurried out of the café rather said it all. Probably for the best that he be the one to go after Ariadne, talking people down from the proverbial ledge being far more his wheelhouse than Crowley’s.

As for Dionysus, he took hold of Eris’s elbow and hauled her from her chair. “I think it’s about time we had a chat, Discordia. Excuse us.”

“ _Roman_ name? Oh, that’s a low—oof! I’m coming, I’m coming!”

And in the wake of those hasty departures, Crowley, Newt, and Anathema remained, holding down the fort.

For a minute none of them spoke. Then Newt cleared his throat. “Well. Er. _That_ happened.”

“I had no idea asking that would set a bomb off,” Anathema said, shooting a questioning glance at Crowley.

“Don’t look at me. I wouldn’t have guessed it either,” Crowley said. He really should have Googled Ariadne when he had the chance. He _hadn’t_ , because he’d invented the pastime of Googling one’s friends, acquaintances, coworkers and self and knew blessed well that nothing good ever came from it, but apparently even a broken clock could be right twice a day.[4]

They sat in awkward silence, Crowley drumming his fingers on the table until he couldn’t take it anymore. “Right. ‘Scuse me, back in a bit.”

“Where are you going?” Newt asked.

“To eavesssdrop,” was all Crowley said before drawing a bit of demonic you-don’t-see-me around himself and leaving the café.

Once outside, he hesitated – not over what he was going to do, but how he was going to do it. Shapeshifting while injured could be a terrible idea at the best of times …

But it wasn’t his corporation that was injured, was it? The sling was half placebo effect for him, half Xanax for Aziraphale. His soul was another story, but … that would be injured in whatever shape he was in.

Maybe he’d even feel better. Snakes didn’t have shoulders.

With little more than a thought and a shimmer in the air, Crowley’s human corporation disappeared, replaced by long black snake with a red belly.

The soreness he’d felt since yesterday didn’t go away. But it didn’t get worse, either. Crowley would take it.

He’d also take the enhanced senses the snake form gave him. Dionysus and Eris were masking their Presences, but their scents were a different story. The scent of Olympian – a tang of lightning, a hint of ambrosia, and an overwhelming wave of power – was not difficult to pick out of a crowd if you knew what to sniff for and had the nose to do so.

So Crowley followed his nose until it led him to Dionysus and Eris, who’d set up camp near the village’s war memorial. There was a bubble of humans-leave-us-alone built around them, but luckily that kind of thing didn’t apply to Crowley. He slithered up a nearby tree and into its branches, the better to hang down and listen.

Eris had seated herself on the base of the memorial, arms crossed over her chest and eyebrow raised at Dionysus. “You have got to be kidding.”

Oh, good, they were speaking English. Then again, Crowley wondered what other language the Goddess of Discord would speak, given a choice in the matter. There were only so many languages that had discord built into their very bedrock quite the same way English did.

“This is why we can’t take you anywhere!” Dionysus, pacing, sounded as if he were mid-rant, which didn’t bother Crowley as much as it might have. Rants were often circular. Whatever he’d missed would surely come back around. “Not half an hour and you’re bringing up Ariadne’s worst memories in front of people she hasn’t even known for a _week_ —”

“You do realize all of that happened when Ariadne was younger than pretty much all of the mortals in the room, right?”

Dionysus stopped, half turning in place. “And what does that have to do with anything?”

“Literal millennia is a long time to be carrying that kind of baggage around,” Eris replied, her tone dripping with the disdain of someone who couldn’t believe she had to state the obvious. “Maybe she should put it down? Which you ought to know better than anyone, O God of Self-Medication.”

Dionysus stiffened, and while Crowley couldn’t see his face, his entire posture radiated a glare.

“We both know she wasn’t the only one who showed up in your band hoping the wine would drown the sorrow.”

“Your point?” The sentence and the air seemed to crackle with static.

Eris rolled her eyes and made a plucking motion, quelling the staticky feeling. “Just that most of the other ones managed to figure their shit out in a couple decades.”

“They were mortals. They only had so many decades to work with.”

“Maybe, but here’s the thing. I don’t recall you being shy about giving them pushes when they needed it. Because, you know. That was kind of our _job_. Giving pushes to mortals.”

“Ari,” Dionysus pointed out with the air of one delivering the coup de grace, “isn’t mortal.”

“So, what? You tried to push her and it never worked? Or were you too busy getting into her chiton and now you’re just using the immortality as an excuse?”

“She’s not mortal, so pushing, or not pushing, her is _none of your fucking business_ ,” Dionysus said. “Now, I’m going back to the café and finishing my damn breakfast. If you’re willing to be civilized, you’re welcome to join us. If not—I’ll call you when we’re ready to deal with you.” And with that, Dionysus threw his hands in his pockets and stalked off.

Eris scoffed, sighed, and leaned back against the monument. She looked up—

Blinked.

And grinned.

“Well, well, well,” she chuckled. “I spy with my little eye … something that beings with S. Or is it C? Whatever. Care to come down, Crowley?”

“With an invitation like that,” Crowley asked, “do I have much of a choisssse?”

“Nope!”

Crowley slithered back down the tree and transformed back once all of him was safely on the ground. “Not much getsss passst you, does it?”

“Long before Peter Parker had a spidey-sense, I had a trouble-sense.” Eris patted the war memorial, and Crowley took a seat. “What’s with the speech impediment?”

Crowley worked his jaw and opened and shut his mouth a few times. “Takesss a few minutessss for the hissss to work itssself out.”

“Ah. That sounds rough, buddy.” Eris fished in the pocket of her leather jacket and pulled out a pack of chewing gum. She wordlessly offered him a piece, and Crowley took it with a nod of thanks.

They sat silent for a few minutes, Eris blowing a bubble twice as big as her head. Once she’d succeeded and popped it – without spraying gum all over everything in a 10-foot radius – she asked, “So, how much of that did you listen in on?”

“You don’t seem upset by that,” Crowley replied, knowing full well it wasn’t an answer to her question.

Eris raised an eyebrow at him, a clear _I see what you did there_ , before answering his implied question. “Pfft, why should I be? I’d’ve done the same thing. I _have_ done the same thing.”

“And what’s a little eavesdropping between friends,” Crowley mused. Then, carefully, casually, “Is Dionysus always … like that?”

“Hair trigger where Ari’s concerned? Yeah, pretty much. Granted, she is, like, ninety percent of his impulse control … and he could have done a lot worse.”

Crowley wondered if he was about to be regaled with the tales of Dionysus’s romantic misadventures, told as only a sister could. But Eris’s mind seemed to be on other things. “Trouble with Dionysus is he’s half mortal. So, you know. He’s scared of losing what he cares about.”

Eris tilted her head toward him, one eyebrow raised, one immortal commiserating with another. Except Crowley wasn’t immortal, not when you came down to it. So, “Can’t blame him,” he replied. “Worst feeling in the bloody world, that.”

Eris blinked. “Oh?”

Crowley tried not to think of a bookshop on fire, of calling Aziraphale’s name and getting no answer. He took a deep breath and could still smell the smoke. “You don’t want to know,” he said, which was the politest way he could tell her, _I’m not going to talk about it._

“… Maybe not,” Eris agreed.

“And, you know,” Crowley added, shifting the conversation slightly, “when you lose someone you care about – ‘specially if it’s sudden or violent – you don’t get over that overnight.”

“Oh, you didn’t like the baggage comments, did you?” Eris asked.

Crowley shrugged and instantly regretted it, as his shoulder informed him that it did not like that gesture at all.

“Look, I’m not saying that the whole thing wasn’t a clusterfuck. And I’m the queen of clusterfucks. But …” Eris crossed her arms over her chest and cracked her gum. “There wasn’t going to be a happy ending for the Minotaur. It was a monster created by Poseidon to punish Minos. Show the mortals who’s boss, you know? And it honestly wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he planned for Theseus to kill it the whole time. Game was rigged from the start.”

It took every bit of self-control Crowley possessed – and contrary to what some might think, he possessed quite a bit – to keep his mouth shut and let Eris choose how to follow that up.

She glanced at him sidelong, a lopsided smirk pulling at one corner of her mouth. “But I guess you’re thinking that doesn’t matter, aren’t you? Who cares if the game is rigged, if you’re smart enough and crazy enough, you can still win?”

“Just because something happens to be written doesn’t mean it’s the only thing that matters. There might be something else written. In a book you haven’t read. In bigger letters. Underlined, even,” Crowley pointed out.

“That’s … bullshit,” Eris said, but she grinned as she said it – the grin of one champion bullshitter taking her hat off to another champion bullshitter. “And I’m not sure I believe that you believe it.”

Now it was Crowley’s turn to grin. “It’s not bullshit. It’s ineffable. And believe it or not …” He lowered his shades just enough to wink at her. “It’s one of the very few things I _do_ believe in.”

* * *

Aziraphale hurried from the café, looked left and right, and then – _Oh, thank Heaven._[5] The red hair was hard to miss, even with her head bowed and walking rapidly away from him.

Rather too rapidly. “Ariadne!” Aziraphale called and chased after her. “Ariadne, wait!”

She didn’t wait. Maybe she hadn’t heard him.

“Ariadne!” Aziraphale kept after her, unable to help wondering if perhaps Gabriel had had a point about the way he’d let this corporation go. It would probably be a bit easier to catch up with her if he’d indulged in a few less desserts—

“Ariadne!”

Fourth time was the charm, apparently—Ariadne stiffened, looked over her shoulder, and stopped. Aziraphale took the opportunity to catch up while he had it.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I don’t mean to disturb you, but—”

What Aziraphale had been about to say died a fast and thoroughly undignified death when he got a good look at Ariadne’s face – wide eyes, slack mouth, slightly flared nostrils. He knew what fear looked like on a corporation, and this was about as obvious as it got.

And, well, he couldn’t help what came next.

“My dear girl,” he put a hand on her shoulder before he could stop himself, “whatever is the matter?”

Ariadne stared at his face. Then his hand. And swallowed twice, hard.

But she didn’t shake him off.

“It’s—um.” She rubbed her face with both hands and ran one through her hair. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

Reluctantly, Aziraphale removed his hand from her shoulder. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” he said. “But—forgive me—I don’t think any of us should be alone right now.”

Ariadne blinked twice, then shook her head. “Oh. Right. Angels and demons with guns.” She took a deep breath and crossed her arms around herself, her hands tucked into her armpits as if she was cold.

“We can keep walking, if you like. Or find someplace to sit down.”

“Walking—walking’s good,” Ariadne replied and started to do that. Thankfully she was no longer moving as quickly as she had been.

As for Aziraphale, he kept pace and kept his mouth shut – never mind how much he wanted to say something. Or ask something. He’d guessed from the moment Hera had made her “offhand” comment about the mess he had unwittingly dropped Ariadne into that her childhood had not been a happy one. And Ariadne’s blithe reassurance that it could have been worse had not been particularly reassuring.

However, it seemed his guess as to why that reassurance had been the best Ariadne could do had been completely off the mark.

They kept walking, Aziraphale letting Ariadne choose the direction. The village wasn’t that big. As long as they didn’t head out for the hedgerows and woods that surrounded it, they couldn’t get too lost.

He was a bit surprised, though, when Ariadne’s wandering led them toward the church in the center of the village. He was even more surprised when, after a moment’s hesitation by the churchyard gate, she pushed it open and headed inside.

“Consecrated ground doesn’t bother you, then?” Aziraphale asked and immediately wondered if he shouldn’t have.

Ariadne shot him a confused look.

“The cemetery,” he gestured, “usually it’s consecrated. Crowley – er – has difficulties with consecrated ground.”

Although, now that Aziraphale thought of it, that difficulty didn’t extend to graveyards – only the space enclosed by the walls of a church. Bit odd, that. Perhaps ineffable.

“Oh,” Ariadne murmured. “It … well, it depends.”

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows, an _Oh? Go on_ , expression if ever one existed.

A smile flickered across Ariadne’s face. “Sometimes …” Ariadne rubbed her arms. “Sometimes, it’s bad. Hot. Like stepping out the door on a one-hundred-degree day and realizing you forgot your sunscreen. And sometimes I don’t feel much of anything at all …” She glanced sidelong at the squat church. “The more recent the church, the less I’m likely to feel—I mean, unless the congregation is, um, really _enthusiastic_.”

“Goodness,” Aziraphale murmured, knowing full well that the less he said about certain _enthusiastic_ denominations, the better for everyone.

“And sometimes …” Her voice was so quiet, Aziraphale wondered if she’d meant to be heard.

“Sometimes?” he asked, unable to help himself.

Ariadne shot him a sideways glance, there-and-gone, almost too quick to be noticed. She took a deep breath. “Have you ever been to one of Gaia’s temples?”

“Can’t say I have,” Aziraphale said. Even – or perhaps especially – after humans turned away from the gods of the Romans and Greeks to the god of Abraham, he tended to avoid the formers’ temples. Barging in would have been … well, it would have been rude.

“Stepping into one of them feels … well, felt, to me, like …” Ariadne tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “Like coming home? Like—like the journey’s over, and you can breathe again, and … and someone is there, and they’re happy to see you back.”

Aziraphale’s eyes widened. That—that was how he felt. Not in every church or mosque or synagogue, but in the best of them. The ones where the congregants were loving and did their best to be kind to each other.

He had no chance to say as much, though, because Ariadne still had something on her mind. “They always remind me of my mother.”

For a moment, Aziraphale’s brain stuttered. Mother? Ariadne didn’t have—well, when Crowley was in a feminine mood, then she had a mother—

And then he realized.

“Pasiphaë?” Aziraphale asked.

Ariadne nodded. “She used to bring me to Gaia’s temples. Just me, not Xenodice or Acacallis or the boys.”

Aziraphale wracked his brain, trying to place those names.

Ariadne must have seen something in his expression, for she took pity on him. “My siblings. There were nine of all of us altogether. Androgeus, Catreus, Xenodice, Deucalion, Asterion and me, Acacallis, Glaucus, and Phaedra.”

“My goodness,” Aziraphale murmured. Though there was no reason for him to be surprised. He had seen four children playing in the courtyard that day, hadn’t he? Ariadne and Asterion (he remembered that name from the scroll) would make six – that was just three more, and in _those_ days? The fact that they’d all survived long enough to be named was the only surprising thing.

“What about Phaedra?” Aziraphale asked.

Ariadne tilted her head to one side, eyebrow raised.

“You said—you said your mother wouldn’t bring your sisters Xenodice or Acacallis to Gaia’s temple. What about Phaedra?”

“Oh.” Ariadne’s voice was small. “She died when Phaedra was born.”

“Oh—oh, my dear, I’m so sorry—”

“No, no, it’s fine. How would you know?” Ariadne said, sounding quite sincere. “The old writers – I mean, that’s not something they would note down. ‘Woman dies in childbirth,’ not exactly …” She broke off with a shrug.

Once again, Aziraphale put a hand on her shoulder. This time, Ariadne did not merely fail to shrug it off. This time, she leaned into it.

“So,” Aziraphale asked, nudging the conversation back toward a more cheerful – slightly – topic, “why did your mother bring only you to Gaia’s temples, then?”

Ariadne didn’t answer at first. Her eyes went to the church, though her gaze seemed unfocused.

Then she smiled. “You know … I think it’s because Gaia was the only one who could handle the weird.”

“The—the what?”

“The wings, the magic, the—the fact that the universe tended to rearrange itself to my liking. The weird,” Ariadne replied. “Mamá – and Minos – they really didn’t know what to make of, um, any of it. Everyone else – well, except Asterion – was normal. So …”

Ariadne took a deep breath and looked at the sky. “Mamá said that after my wings started popping out, she went looking for answers everywhere. First Zeus’s temple, because he was Minos’s father, but the priests there didn’t know anything. Then Helios, her father, but his priests didn’t know anything either. And then Mamá went to her mother, Perse, and Perse went to her parents Oceanus and Tethys, and _they_ didn’t know anything. So finally she went to Gaia, because all roads lead to Gaia, you know? And the priestess there – she seemed to know that Mamá and I were coming, because Mamá said she picked me up, tickled me so the wings came out, and said I would always be Gaia’s child.”

Aziraphale … well, Aziraphale would have to think about that in more detail later. It was curious that _the_ primordial Greek goddess would choose to take Ariadne under her proverbial wing.

But now was not the time for that. “How old were you?” he asked. “When your wings first manifested?”

Ariadne scrunched her brows. “Um … Mamá said it was after I started to crawl, but before I started to walk … she said I used the wings for balance when I was starting to walk. So … nine months? Ten?”

Nine or ten months. Aziraphale tried to picture what Ariadne would have looked like then – a larger, chubbier version of the newborn he’d left behind? Would she have already shown hints of the woman she would become?

He and Crowley had missed so very much …

“Is that normal?” Ariadne asked, drawing him out of his thoughts with a bump.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Wings showing up around that age – using them for balance – that kind of thing,” Ariadne asked. “Just wondering.”

“Oh … well, er, I wouldn’t know. That is,” Aziraphale said, “all of us – well, most of us – we were created as adults. Even when we’ve had to replenish the ranks, as it were, we started grown-up. You … as far as I’m aware, you’re the first to start out as an infant, and incorporated, for that matter.”

“Huh,” Ariadne murmured, and said no more.

Somehow, as they spoke, they’d managed to cross through the churchyard and almost to the church door. Aziraphale gestured toward it. “Shall we? Or would you rather head elsewhere?”

Ariadne glanced askance at the door for a long moment, but eventually she shrugged. “We can try. Anglican churches usually aren’t too bad.”

“Very well. After you, my dear,” Aziraphale said, opening the door for her[6] and waving her through. He smiled, but part of him was tense, ready to pull her back at the first sign of a problem.

And he very nearly did, when Ariadne took two steps into the church and stopped dead. But the small, awestruck, “Oh,” stopped him.

She turned around, grinning. “I’m good. I mean – this is one of the good ones.”

Aziraphale very nearly sighed with relief as he followed her inside. And—oh, this was one of the good ones. Aziraphale closed his eyes and breathed deeply, basking in the feeling of warmth and welcome.

Heaven had once felt something like this. Not for the first time, Aziraphale wondered when that had changed.

“You feel it too?” Ariadne asked.

“I do,” Aziraphale replied. “Come – let’s have a seat.”

Ariadne led the way into the nave, slipping into a pew close to the back. Once there, she closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths.

“You know,” she murmured once she opened her eyes, “I used to think that maybe the churches that felt good to me used to be old temples of earth goddesses – sort of theological recycling, you know? But if you feel the same way I do …”

“It could be the humans,” Aziraphale said. “Their powers of belief are quite extraordinary, you know. If they believe – truly believe – that a place is good and holy …”

Ariadne didn’t answer right away, gazing into the vaulted ceiling of the little church. “They … they really do remake the world in their own image, don’t they? What they believe …” Her voice caught, and Aziraphale had to restrain himself from physically reaching out for her. “Can I—can I ask you something?”

“Of course, dear.”

“What do you know about Asterion?”

Her voice was small and frightened, and Aziraphale knew he would have to tread very, very carefully.

“Well, I’ve heard stories,” he replied in as simple and casual a tone as he could muster. “But I don’t think I’d say I really _know_ anything about him. Every story I’ve ever read has gone through so many hands, I’m fairly certain the truth got lost somewhere along the way.”

Ariadne nodded, and swallowed, and stared at her lap.

Aziraphale leaned forward, trying to catch her eye. “Why don’t you tell me a bit about him? If you don’t mind, that is.”

She laughed, the sound thin and watery as a raincloud. “Gods – where would I begin?” She wiped at her eyes in a way that set Aziraphale hunting for a handkerchief.

But before he could find one, she was speaking again. “Well, for starters, he never ate people. That was just—ugh. Athenians. They—they’re the ones who wrote everything down, so, you know, all anyone knows is their side of the story.”

Aziraphale nodded.

“And—he wasn’t a monster. Not even after what Minos did to him! And who _does_ that? Just—just takes someone and throws them into a maze they can’t get out of? Even if—even if Asterion was dangerous, you don’t—you don’t do that! He was doing the best he could, and he would have done better if people would just let him be!”

Hearing that, what Aziraphale wanted to do was put an arm around her and perhaps a wing as well, hold her close, and let her get it all out. He had no idea how that would be received, though, so he restrained himself to a nod, his most nonjudgmental expression, and the most encouraging noises he could manage.

“Mamá and I could keep him happy, most of the time, keep him calm—but when Mamá died—no, when Androgeus died, because that’s when it all went wrong—” Ariadne took a deep breath. “And I still don’t know what happened to him. Every freaking messenger who came from Athens told a different story. One said he’d been killed on the road to Thebes, another said that he’d been killed by the Athenians after winning the games, and someone else said he’d been killed hunting a boar! Just— _make up your minds_!”

Ariadne took a deep, shaky breath, and made another pass at her eyes. “S-sorry—where was I?”

“Your brother, Androgeus—”

She shook her head. “Before that.”

“Ah. You and your—your mother, attempting to keep Asterion calm and happy.”

“Right. Mamá – Mamá did most of the work, when we were little, but I could usually—I _thought_ it was a twin thing, you know? That could get through to Asterion when others couldn’t. Now …”

Ariadne’s eyes went unfocused. “Maybe—maybe it was that nobody else really understood what it was like, to just … not fit. Mamá did – half-nymph, half-Titan, trying to shrink herself down to fit in the mortal world. Minos didn’t. He—he was a son of Zeus; he made the world grow to fit him. And I …”

Ariadne twined and twisted her fingers around each other, nervous energy seeking an outlet. “Asterion just wanted to be left alone. When we were younger, before the labyrinth, when I could take him outside … sometimes we’d go to the foothills around the city, where nobody was around, and he could just be. He loved chasing birds and squirrels, and when Mamá and I would pat his head or scratch him behind the ears, he loved that. And—and he couldn’t speak, but he always understood what you told him, and—and he could _communicate_ ; you just had to know how to listen to him.

“But …” Ariadne closed her eyes and seemed to shrink into herself, and once again Aziraphale ached to put an arm around her. “Then he started getting bigger … and he couldn’t handle being around people … they were all just too loud and too much … and …”

“Ariadne,” Aziraphale said quietly.

She blinked owlishly at him.

Aziraphale held out a hand to her, like he’d seen Dionysus do. Smiled. And said nothing.

Ariadne didn’t just take the hand. She clung to it. “I just—I should have done more for him. After Mamá died, I was the only one on his side. Xenodice was already married, Acacallis and Glaucus were scared of him, Phaedra was a baby, Catreus and Deucalion were always on Minos’s side, and Androgeus – Androgeus was dead …”

“How old were you?” Aziraphale asked. “When Androgeus died?”

“F-fourteen,” Ariadne said. She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. “Mamá was a few months later – and—and Mamá was barely even cold before Minos shut Asterion up in the labyrinth. He must have been planning it for years; there was always construction in the basement that I remember, but I didn’t think—I didn’t know—”

“My dear,” Aziraphale said. “You were fourteen. And had just lost your mother. You could hardly be expected to understand what he was planning or move against it.”

Ariadne snorted; well, they could work on accepting that later. “Somebody had to. And I was the only one who could have cared enough to try. Although …”

She went quiet, staring at the altar and letting go of his hand to wrap her arms around herself. “Maybe it’s better I didn’t …”

The logical question to ask would have been “Why?” Aziraphale did not ask that. He remembered a thing or two from the legends the Greeks had told themselves. And given what Ariadne had said in the café …

Well, the question rather answered itself. “Theseus?” Aziraphale asked.

Ariadne turned back to him, eyes swimming with unshed tears. “I thought he was going to _help_.”

There was, Aziraphale could tell, a story here. One that it would probably do Ariadne some good to tell, if not to him, then to someone who could listen and be objective about it. Someday.

The nice thing about being quasi-immortal beings was that there would be plenty of time for that – later.

“Oh, my _dear_ girl,” Aziraphale murmured, this time not able to stop himself from putting an arm around her shoulder.

That broke the dam. Ariadne stared, hiccupped, and collapsed against him, her sobs echoing through the small church.

“It’s all right,” Aziraphale said into her hair, not sure if she was listening but knowing it was what she needed to hear. “My dear, you did the best you could.”

And though he didn’t have the courage to say it out loud, he promised her something.

Nobody was ever going to do anything that would make her feel like this again. Not if he and Crowley had anything to say about it.

* * *

[1] Or lowlights, depending on how one wanted to look at it.

[2] Which really could do with some improvement.

[3] No offense to Dog.

[4] Rather like the M25. Sure, it had done a number on the Bentley, but it had also discorporated Hastur.

[5] Or Someplace, at any rate.

[6] The door had been locked, but the lock that could withstand the belief of an angel who saw no reason why the House of the Lord should ever be closed to children who needed Her shelter had yet to be invented. The force of this belief also ensured that the burglar alarm found nothing to complain about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
> Want to chat more? Come give me a shout-out on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Expect the next update on Tuesday!


	14. Give Me One Vision

Samael stomped away from the corporation office, craving a cigarette with every inch of her celestial being. Not that she could have a cigarette. Besides lacking a corporation with which to smoke one, all of Heaven was a non-smoking area.

Not for the first time, Samael wondered who had come up with that rule and if she could get away with smiting them.

She probably shouldn’t have been indulging in these feelings, but she did anyway, because it was easier to be annoyed about wanting a cigarette and the intransigence of the quartermaster than to think about her real problems. Although really, the Quartermaster Sariel was being ridiculous. _“Corporations don’t grow on trees, you know,”_ he had said smugly, which was news to Samael. She could remember an early prototype of humanity that _had_ grown on trees, thank you very much, so why couldn’t modern corporations do the same?[1]

Her hand had itched to smack the sideburns right off him, but Samael had restrained herself and simply walked away. Now, she just had to—

“Archangel Samael?”

“What now?” Samael snapped, turning on her heel to face whoever dared to—

She froze.

The Almighty knew. The Almighty must have heard every uncharitable thought about Sariel, about forms signed in triplicate, about interminable meetings that gave eternity a run for its money.

There could be no other explanation for the six interns standing before her with vaguely hopeful and expectant expressions.[2]

“What—what do you want?” Samael asked, throat dry.

There was much shuffling of feet and glancing askance at each other on the part of the interns. Samael realized with a start that they looked almost as afraid of her as she was of them. Or, well, of the Almighty who had certainly set them on her.

“That is,” Samael cleared her throat, “can I help you?”

More shuffling of feet and glancing around. There was a ripple of nudges, and finally one male-shaped intern with black hair shaped like a cloudpuff stepped forward. “Excuse us, Archangel Samael, but Liel was saying—”

“Who?” Samael interrupted.

“M-m-me, ma’am,” said a female-shaped intern. Samael squinted at her. She knew—

_Oh._

It was _the_ intern – the one who’d gone along for the shootout in the traitor Aziraphale’s bookstore and the chase through London and the discorporation by explosion.

“All right. Liel, what were you saying?” Samael asked.

“About—about what we saw,” Liel squeaked. “The—the half-breed? The half-demon, half-angel?”

_What? She’s talking about that? Who said she could—_

_Oh. Oh HELL._

In their haste to kick the underlings out of the meeting, they’d never actually _said_ the underlings were to keep their mouths shut.

And if rumors were just starting in Heaven, they’d probably already spread like wildfire through Hell …

Samael schooled her face into her most forbidding expression and tried to think. Denying everything would get her nowhere. Even in Heaven, there were fewer things that could convince everyone that something was up than a stern declaration from management that there was nothing to see here, move along.

But at the same time, she couldn’t go making the rumors worse. So … she’d have to play this by ear.

“What about her?” Samael asked.

The rest of the interns gasped.

“What?” Samael let her glare fix on each of the interns in turn.

“So it’s _true_?” asked a female-shaped intern with green eyes.

Samael let herself raise an eyebrow. “Are you accusing a fellow angel of lying?”

Green Eyes gasped. “What? No, no, sir! Ma’am! We’d never say an _archangel_ —”

“Who said anything about archangels? I’m talking about Liel over there,” Samael said, nodding at Liel, who had bowed her head and blushed fiercely as soon as Green Eyes began to speak. “If you don’t believe what she’s saying, then why are you asking me about it?”

“She, uh,” that was Cloudpuff Hair again, ducking his head in a way that suggested he’d be flushing if his complexion could show one, “she could be wrong. Not lying. Just … wrong.”

“B-because,” now another male-shaped intern was speaking, this one the shortest in the group, “an angel and a demon having a … a child, that’s …” He glanced at the rest of the interns, asking for backup. “Is that possible?”

“That’s the working theory,” Samael replied.

“But _how_?” asked another female-shaped intern, this one the tallest of the crew.

“Haven’t a clue. Was trying not to think about it, to be perfectly honest.”

That got a few snickers. Samael kept her face as stony as she could make it.[3] The snickers died.

“Any more questions?” Samael asked.

“… What does it mean?” asked the only intern who hadn’t spoken yet.

Samael blinked. “What do _you_ mean?”

The formerly quiet intern gulped and shuffled from foot to foot. “Angels – angels can’t have children with other angels. Demons can’t have children with other demons. And angels with humans—”

“I am _not_ getting into a discussion of the Nephilim with you lot.”

The interns exchanged glances, and there was a general nodding of heads. “Fair enough,” said Formerly Quiet One. “But this—this child the traitors made—she’s not like the Nephilim?”

Samael bit her lip. She restrained herself to a shrug. “We don’t know much about her.”

“If—if she was like the Nephilim,” Liel squeaked, “wouldn’t we have found out about her by now?”

“Perhaps.”

The interns glanced at each other again, communicating in raised eyebrows and skeptical glances that they’d seen right through Samael’s attempt at hedging. Well, even if Heaven and Hell didn’t know exactly how long the traitors had hidden their child, they could certainly guess that she wasn’t as destructive as the Nephilim had been. The Nephilim had been pretty damn conspicuous when you came right down to it.

“So, if she’s not like the Nephilim,” Formerly Quiet One went on, “then a demon helped to create something good.”

Thinking back to the chase through London and her own discorporation-via-explosion, Samael replied, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves on that.”

Formerly Quiet One’s eyes narrowed, but they went on, “And an angel had congress with a demon and didn’t Fall for it.”

Samael had no choice but to nod.

“So,” Formerly Quiet One asked, “what does all that _mean_?”

Samael hesitated. Then she took a deep breath and went for the bare, unvarnished truth. “I haven’t the foggiest idea. I’m not the archangel you go to if you want philosophy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting with the Archangel Gabriel.”

To dissuade the interns from attempting to ask more questions or follow her, Samael strode right for them, forcing them to part like the Red Sea, and stalked away.

And to be fair, she did have to get to an urgent meeting with Gabriel. He didn’t know about it yet, but he’d forgive her once he learned what the meeting was for.

The archangels’ offices – such as they could be said to have offices – were in the Ninth Sphere. There were no walls between them, but nonetheless each of them had their own space, and every archangel had ways to ensure that they would not be interrupted by interns, powers, virtues, or principalities unless they wanted to be.

Luckily, as another archangel, none of those ways applied to Samael. So it didn’t take her long to find Gabriel in his not-office, scowling at the documents on the podium before him.

“We have a problem,” Samael said without preamble. “We never told Liel to keep her mouth shut, and now all the interns know about the girl.”

Gabriel’s head jerked up.

“What.”

“And if Liel told the interns, you can bet that Legion and what’s-his-face – Mercurial? – gave all of Hell the complete play-by-play,” Samael went on, deliberately not giving Gabriel a chance to get his bearings. “We need to come out with some kind of statement before this gets out of hand.”

“Before this gets— _it’s already out of hand_!” Gabriel shouted. It was the sort of shout that would lead your average cherub or dominion to quake in their celestial boots and try to hide under the podium.

Samael merely raised an eyebrow.

Gabriel took a deep breath. “How many angels has Liel told?”

“Does it matter? We’re not going to be able to put the cat back in the bag. Didn’t work when we tried it after the Apocalypse, isn’t going to work now.”

Gabriel still scowled. Samael crossed her arms over her chest and waited for him to see sense.

His nostrils flared, and one after another, the muscles under that well-tailored suit tensed. “How did you find this out?”

“The interns had questions. And for some reason, they came to _me_ for answers.” Samael gave Gabriel a quick recap of their conversation. “Like I said,” she said when she came to the end of her recitation, “the sooner we get out in front of this, the better.”

Gabriel didn’t seem to hear her. “A demon. Made something _good_ ,” he repeated.

“I told them that was _far_ from certain—”

“If that—that _thing_ is able to smite, it’s not nearly as evil as it ought to be.”

Samael opened her mouth, but Gabriel had turned away from her, to the window. He took a deep breath and put his hands behind his back, gazing out.

Samael took a deep breath of her own, shoved her hands in her pockets, and stood next to him.

“Uriel said she was going to talk to the Metatron,” she said. “Did she find anything out?”

“The Metatron,” Gabriel’s teeth sounded on edge, “has said that he will confer with the Almighty and get back to us.”

Samael barely restrained herself from rolling her eyes. Based on recent history, the Metatron would get back to them in a week, a century, or not at all. For nearly a thousand years – and perhaps even before that – the Almighty had been … quiet. Even the Metatron could barely get through to Her.

If Samael couldn’t still feel that warm glow of Grace and connection, she might have cried out, even as the Son had, “ _Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani_?”[4]

“So, as we wait for an answer, we’re reduced to …” Gabriel gestured to the podium behind them. “Looking through old photos and trying to figure out where they hid the—that _thing_. Did you know that those two,” there was absolutely no doubt whom Gabriel was referring to, “have been fraternizing for centuries behind our backs?”

Samael glanced over her shoulder. Now that she was looking, she could see that the documents were photographs. “Are you going through Earth Observation records?”

“Michael has a pile for you as—”

“ _Gabriel_.” Samael glared at him. “Put the pictures aside, write a memo, and get some interns to do the grunt work. That’s what interns are _for_.”

Gabriel’s scowl deepened.

“If you put a few interns on the task and have someone competent supervising, you’ll know exactly what they’re thinking, too,” Samael pointed out. “Much better than asking me. You know people don’t talk to me.”

Gabriel glared at her sidelong.

Samael flashed him a grin, the one she usually wore when she strode out into battle. “Besides, it’s transparency, isn’t it? Everything out in the open … clear and aboveboard, you might say. Emphasis on _above_.” Samael gestured to the vast, empty, brilliant expanse of the Home Office around them, letting their surroundings make her point. “Not like Down Below, laid out like a maze with pokey little offices and breakrooms everywhere. We might as well prove it and let the troops know what’s going on.”

“We’re not _completely_ transparent, but … point taken.” Gabriel sighed. Then his eyes narrowed, and he turned to her. “How do you know what the offices Down There look like?”

Samael rolled her eyes. “You _do_ remember we’re supposed to be fighting a war against them, don’t you? You want to know what the enemy’s fortress looks like if you’re hoping to take it.”

That was a lie; the only reason Samael knew was because Mephistopheles had complained about the layout after the last round of renovations.[5] However, Gabriel didn’t need to know that.

“Earth was supposed to be the battlefield,” Gabriel pointed out.

“Contingency plans.”

Gabriel snorted, but it was accompanied by a fond smile. “You and Michael and your battle plans.”

“We do what we can,” Samael said. “And what _you_ can do is write a memo. Here …” She turned on her heel and gathered the pictures from the podiums. “I’ll get all the pictures and wrangle the interns – the interns already know.”

“You _hate_ wrangling interns.”

“I hate writing memos more.”

Gabriel sighed and shook his head, but he marched to his podium. A sleek monitor and keyboard appeared, and Gabriel began to painstakingly type with his index fingers.[6]

As for Samael, she power-walked out of there, planning to find Uriel, Michael, and Sandalphon and their pictures, then, somehow, the interns.

And if she used the inevitable walking time to glance through the pictures and make sure that anything they revealed about the mysterious Ariadne, Samael knew first … well, nobody had to know, did they?

* * *

There were some conversations that needed to happen in private … which was why Ariadne was in the backyard of Jasmine Cottage, staring at her phone.

All she had to do was press the call button, so there was no reason for her to freeze up like this. She and Persephone had known each other for literal millennia. Abruptly breaking off a text conversation was far from the worst thing either had ever done or said to the other. Persephone would be annoyed, but when Ariadne explained …

Well. That was the rub, wasn’t it?

_This is not going to get any easier the longer you procrastinate,_ Ariadne told herself. She took a deep breath, pushed the call button, and held the phone to her ear.

_Ring … ring … ring …_

“Well, look who FINALLY decided to pick up the phone!”

Ariadne winced and rubbed her hand over her face. “Hi.”

“If I recall correctly,” Persephone said, “I believe I invited you out for lunch, you said that the timing was bad, and then I told you that I really needed to talk to you face-to-face ASAP. And then, nothing. What the heck, Ari?”

Ariadne took a deep breath. Persephone didn’t sound angry. Miffed. Annoyed. But not angry.

Hopefully what she had to say would cure that. She swallowed.

“Did you, by chance, want to talk to me about a certain demon and a certain angel?”

The other end of the line was silent.

“By name of Crowley and Aziraphale?” Ariadne went on.

Another pause. Then, “You better just spit it out,” Persephone answered. “I think I know what you’re about to say, but I don’t _know-_ know, and the suspense is killing me.”

In any other set of circumstances, Ariadne would have pointed out that Persephone was not technically capable of being killed by suspense. Now, however, was not the time.

“I found them. They, um …” Ariadne looked from left to right and back again, even though nobody was in the yard but her. She closed her eyes and told the universe that other than Persephone, she didn’t want anyone to hear what came next.

Hoping the universe was in a cooperative mood, Ariadne said, “They’re my parents.”

“I KNEW IT!”

Ariadne jumped and held the phone a foot away from her ear.

“I KNEW IT, I KNEW IT, I KNEW IT! I knew it the second they showed up here and said they wanted to talk to Minos! Their wings are _just_ like yours! And you even look like them!”

Ariadne brought the phone back long enough to say, “Yep,” before jerking it away again.

“So what happened? How did they find you? It’s only been a couple of days since they left, and they didn’t spend nearly long enough in the archives to trace you across thousands of years!”

Persephone’s volume had modulated enough that Ariadne felt comfortable bringing the phone back to her ear. “I found them.”

“Wait, what? _How_?”

Ariadne took a deep breath. “You, um, remember the PowerPoint?”

“Yeah …”

“And the wings. In the PowerPoint.”

“The wings—oh. _Oh_. Oh wow, you were way ahead of me on that.”

Persephone couldn’t see, but Ariadne shrugged anyway. “Little bit nearer and dearer to my heart. Anyway … the name of Aziraphale’s shop was also in the PowerPoint.”

“What? No way. Father said he didn’t want us contacting any of the …” Persephone trailed off. “Ari. How much trouble are you in right now?”

Ariadne gulped. “A lot. And only partially for the reasons you think.”

“Partially?”

“Apparently your father already knows I disobeyed direct orders. But that’s not the worst of it.”

“I’m sorry, _what_?”

Ariadne rubbed her hand over her face. There was a bench nearby, but she had no desire to sit on it. Motion, motion would help.

“Aziraphale’s and Crowley’s … former employers are, um, not pleased with them.”

Silence from the other end of the line. Then, slowly, deliberately, “Ari?”

“Yeah?”

“Hera sent us all an article yesterday. A bookstore in Soho suddenly sprouting a vineyard. Does that have anything …?”

“Yep.”

“Holy—are you ok? What about Dionysus, is he ok?”

“I’m fine. Dionysus is fine. We’re all fine. Not sure about the bookshop, though.” Ariadne did not mention Crowley’s injury. Or how he’d come by it. To say nothing of the car she’d blown up. “But, um …” She sighed. “I may have to ask for a favor.”

“A favor,” Persephone repeated.

“Yeah, I know, I know, I already owe you one for not feeding my parents to Cerberus—”

“Oh please, like Hades would let Cerberus eat an angel or a demon. ‘Specially not two who have been knocking around on the mortal plane for millennia. Who knows where they’ve been?”

In spite of herself, Ariadne laughed. “So Hades is attempting to save himself a massive vet bill?”

“No, he’s trying to keep the pampered pooch from feeling poorly. Anyway. You were saying. A favor?”

Ariadne forced herself to breathe deeply as she gathered her thoughts.

Because she _had_ thought about this. She hadn’t said much about it, because she had no idea how her idea would be received – doubly so now that Eris had decided she was along for the ride.[7] But there were certain facts that had occurred to her, and those facts had led to certain inescapable conclusions.

Fact one: They couldn’t stay in Tadfield forever. Aziraphale and Crowley were confident that it was safe enough for the time being, because neither Hell nor Heaven would want to tangle with the Antichrist on the Antichrist’s territory. But that would only last for so long, and they needed to move before that grace period ended.

Fact two: Places had power. There was such a thing as a sacred space. In the old days, gods had claimed everything from cities to entire islands for themselves. Apollo had Delphi; Aphrodite had taken Cythera; Naxos had been sacred to Dionysus long before Ariadne had washed up on that particular beach. That power had faded from the old spaces as mortals found new gods and as the gods themselves had moved farther afield. But the underlying principle remained.

Fact three: Los Angeles was _theirs_. It belonged to Dionysus, and perhaps a bit to her, in a way that was at least as strong as any of the old sacred spaces. There was scarcely a demon who dared to show their pointy tail within city limits, and that wasn’t just because Sin City sucked them all in like a black hole. Dionysus had made sure of it. And angels had barely shown more than a hint of interest in the city ever since the movies had made it their home.

If it came down to a fight – and Ariadne very much suspected that it would come down to a fight – she wanted it to be on _their_ territory.

“We need to get to LA,” Ariadne said. “And we might need to get there in a hurry. Would you be open to letting us use the Underworld as a stopping point?”

Before Persephone could answer, Ariadne hurried on, “We wouldn’t even need to cross the Styx, not if we played this right. There’s a liminal in London, I don’t know it off the top of my head—”

“Angel station,” Persephone replied in a tone that was impossible to read.

_Angel station? Seriously?_ Ariadne shook her head; she’d ponder that later. “Right, ok, Angel station. And LAX is a liminal. If we can get from Angel station to the Underworld, and then the Underworld to LAX – then we’re home. Maybe not home free, but home.”

“So … you want to use the Underworld as a layover?” Persephone’s skepticism colored every word.

“… I wasn’t going to put it like that, but, yes.”

“I … hmm.”

Ariadne paced faster as Persephone made noncommittal noise after noncommittal noise.

“Can I ask some questions?” she asked finally.

“Shoot.”

“Ok, dumb question number one – why don’t you just take a plane? Wouldn’t that be easier?”

“Because angels and demons have wings, and I don’t want them starting something at thirty-five thousand feet. Not when we’re on a plane full of unsuspecting mortals. Flying over an ocean.”

“Ok, fair enough,” Persephone replied. “And taking a ship is out because?”

“Takes too long, and we have the same problem with angels and demons starting something in an enclosed space full of mortals. While on an ocean. Plus, once we get to New York or wherever, then we have to cross the country to get to LA.”

“Good points all. And. Well, as much as Hera would love to see angels and demons crash a flight in the mid-Atlantic, get the belief going in the right direction, I really don’t think _I’d_ want to see that happen to a flight you and Dionysus were on. I’ll talk to Hades and we’ll get something set up.”

Ariadne let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “ _Thank_ you. I owe you one.”

There was a telling silence on the other end of the line. Then, hesitantly, “You know … there is something …”

“Oh?”

“It’s just, every time Hades shows up in a movie, he’s a cheap knockoff of … well. Crowley’s former boss.”

“Just his boss? Aziraphale’s former boss doesn’t strike me as a particularly pleasant person, either.”

Persephone laughed.

“But I get what you’re saying.” Ariadne buffed her nails on her shirt and thought about it. Usually she and Dionysus tried to stay out of movies depicting Dionysus’s relatives, because getting in the middle of mortals’ interpretations of their stories was a great way to invite a fight at the next family reunion.[8] But as payback for a favor …

“I’ll see what we can do,” Ariadne replied. “It won’t be immediate, but—we’ll come up with something.”

Persephone sighed. “Thank you. When you get down to it, it doesn’t matter what Hera says – you and Dionysus have a better route to mortals’ subconscious than all the miracles in the world.”

Ariadne chuckled but didn’t argue. With that done, there was little more to do but answer Persephone’s questions about Aziraphale and Crowley – and Persephone had plenty, not even counting those that Ariadne hedged on – and say goodbye.

As she walked back into the house, her mind was busy turning over potential plans – not just for their eventual escape, but how she’d talk Crowley, Aziraphale, and Dionysus into it, and how they might lay a few false trails in the meantime.

Thus, it was several hours later, when she was thinking of something else entirely, that it even occurred to her to wonder what Persephone had meant when she brought up Hera.

* * *

“So let me get this straight. An angel … and a demon … had a _kid_?”

Mephistopheles had only come into the break room to get coffee,[9] but upon hearing the conversation take _that_ turn, he had a reason to take a seat at one of the cold plastic chairs and linger. He even grabbed an out-of-date copy of the _Infernal Times_ and flipped it open, just to make the eavesdropping less obvious.

“Not just _any_ demon,” said Ulgon. She leaned forward, conspiratorial, flashing her too-sharp teeth in a wicked grin. “Demon _Crowley_.”

Altadoth, the demon who’d first spoken, shuddered. Ever since that … performance in the bathtub filled with Holy Water, it was a common reaction to hearing Crowley’s name.

“And, you know, the other one,” added Migthaxad. He shifted, his shoulders undulating with the movement. “The traitor-angel. Azizofel—Aeropostale—Acetaminophen—how the bloody fuck do you say his name?”

“Who care? We know who you’re talking about,” Ulgon replied.

“But …” Altadoth was worrying her lower lip; she did that a lot. “But _how_?”

“What, how’d they have the kid?” Migthaxad asked. He stroked his perfect chin. “Probably the same way humans do. I mean, Crowley’s never been in the ‘cubus department, but he’s been incorporated since, you know, The Beginning. He’s probably figured sex out.”

“But wouldn’t that involve …” Altadoth shuddered and looked over her shoulder – literally over her shoulder – before leaning closer to her companions and whispering, as if she was saying a dirty word, “ _orifices_?”

Ulgon made a face. “Ugh. _Orifices_.”

“You’re gonna have to be more specific than that,” said Migthaxad with a grin that could only be described as _shit-eating_.

“What do you mean? There’s only one – well, one on each – orifice that humans use for fucking,” Altadoth replied, head tilted and a puzzled frown on her face.

“Oh, _honey_ ,” Migthaxad laughed. “Sweetheart. _No_.”

Altadoth frowned. “But—but I thought …” She scratched her head. “Well, how many orifices do humans use during sex?”

“Try _all of them_.”

Altadoth’s jaw dropped. Ulgon’s eyes narrowed skeptically. Even Mephistopheles felt a few twinges of doubt. He’d never spent time in the ‘cubus department, either, but sex was a huge motivation for most humans, so any demon who spent significant time on Earth learned a thing or two.

A thing or two, however, wasn’t _everything_ … and Migthaxad had been a ‘cubus for as long as there’d been a ‘cubus department …

“The mouth?” Ulgon asked.

“They have a specific _word_ for sex involving the mouth,” Migthaxad said. “Well. Phrase really, but it usually gets shortened down to one word.”

“But don’t they use their mouths to eat?” Altadoth asked.

“Yep.”

“And they …”

“Yep.”

Altadoth shuddered.

“What about the ears?” Ulgon asked.

Migthaxad smirked and waggled his eyebrows.

“ _What_? How?” Ulgon asked.

“Believe me when I say that the ears are extremely important to sex.”

Ulgon gasped and gagged. Altadoth, however, slapped the table. “The nostrils! They can’t _possibly_ use the nostrils in fucking!”

Migthaxad’s only response was to _grin_.

“Oh, _gross_!!!!”

Ulgon was retching; Mephistopheles’s stomach was starting to turn; and Migthaxad was cackling. “You asked!”

“And I’m regretting every fucking choice that led to me asking,” Altadoth muttered. She stared at the battered laminate-topped table in what could only be called acute misery.

Until her brow wrinkled and her frown turned puzzled. “Wait. Back up. Humans—they need to _opposites_ to breed.”

“Aren’t angels and demons opposites?” Ulgon asked, and Mephistopheles nearly fell off his chair.

“No—I mean, well, _yeah_ , but—but not opposites like _humans_ are. You need—you need a boy one and a girl one! If you want to make a baby,” Altadoth went on.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Migthaxad held up both hands. “That’s reproduction. Not my department. Well, ok, technically my department, but sooo not my specialty.”

Ulgon raised an eyebrow at him. “What the Heaven are you on about?”

“I prefer to stick to the fucking part, sweetheart. I avoid reproduction jobs like the plague.”

Ulgon’s brow furrowed. “I thought we weren’t supposed to reproduce with the humans.”

“Well, it’s not _us_ doing the reproducing. We just. Move stuff around.”

“What?”

“It’s—look, let me just walk you through it. So, what you do first, is you do the succubus thing, get with whatever dude your boss wants to be the father of the kid – we’ll call him Human A. And then when he puts his, his _stuff_ in you, you sort of – just hold onto it, you know? And then you shift over to incubus form, find the woman your boss wants to be the mother – we’ll call her Human B – and shoot Human A’s stuff into Human B. As part of sex, because that’s usually easiest.”

“What,” Altadoth said flatly. Ulgon, however, looked thoughtful, if a little faraway.

“But really, it’s _such_ a pain in the ass; nobody would even do it if their bosses weren’t making them. The timing is so finicky, and you almost always have to waste a miracle to get the woman actually pregnant because I’ve yet to meet the demon who’s figured out when human mating season is—”

“Eggs!” Ulgon interjected, slamming her hand on the table and making Altadoth, Migthaxad, and Mephistopheles jump.

“… How did we get onto food play?” asked Migthaxad asked.

“I don’t know what that means,” Ulgon said. “And it doesn’t matter. Because eggs! That’s how they did it!”

“How who did what?” asked Altadoth, echoing Mephistopheles’s question.

“The angel and Crowley! How they made a baby!”

“… I am _really_ not following,” Migthaxad said.

Ulgon sighed and rolled her eyes. “The demon Crowley. What’s his second form?”

“A—a snake,” Altadoth said.

“Right. And the angel—well, he’s an angel, right? Gotta have something in common with birds, then. With the wings and all.”

“But even fallen angels have wings,” Altadoth replied, mystified.

Ulgon waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. In fact, it works better that way. So, how do snakes reproduce? And birds?”

The only response to that was two blank stares.

She sighed. “Eggs,” Ulgon said. “They both lay _eggs_.”

“All right … and?” Migthaxad asked.

“The demon Crowley and the angel must have laid an egg together, and that’s how they got a baby. No orifices required!” Ulgon finished with a grin.

Migthaxad’s jaw fell. Altadoth gasped, but it was a happy gasp, the kind that came when your friend just solved a particularly difficult riddle. Mephistopheles was trying to figure out why that explanation felt so horrifically wrong.

He didn’t get much farther than trying. “Is there a _reason_ ,” came a growl from the doorway, “why there are _four_ demons in here when they should all be WORKING?”

Mephistopheles’s eyes flew wide. _Oh, shit!_

“D-Duke Hastur!” Altadoth stammered. “We were just—we were just—”

“Leaving! Break’s over!” Ulgon said, hauling her friends up by their elbows and hustling them out the door. Mephistopheles tossed his copy of the _Times_ to the side and abandoned his coffee, hoping to sneak out behind them—

“Not you.” Hastur took hold of Mephistopheles’s shoulder and held him place. “Got orders about you, I have. His Lowliness wants to see you.”

Mephistopheles’s eyes widened and the bottom dropped out of his stomach.

_Satan_ wanted to see _him_?

One of the very, very few advantages Mephistopheles had in Hell was his ability to keep his mouth shut, so he said nothing as Hastur practically frog-marched him down a long, dark corridor Mephistopheles had never been practically frog-marched down before. At least, he didn’t think he’d seen it before. But it looked like almost every other corridor in Hell, so how was Mephistopheles to judge?

At least this meant that Mephistopheles wasn’t being brought to the Lowest Throne. Every demon knew what the corridor to _that_ room looked like. And none of them wanted to be dragged down it by Hastur or any other duke.

Finally, Hastur knocked on a door that looked no different than every other door. “Enter,” said a low, silky voice.

Hastur turned to Mephistopheles, grinned, and threw the door open. “After _you_ ,” he said and pushed Mephistopheles inside.

Mephistopheles stumbled into—

An office?

Something—something about this office was very _wrong_ …

It was only after Mephistopheles had glanced around the room three times, taking in all the details, that he realized what it was. This office wasn’t like the other offices in Hell, with their weeping walls, flickering lights, and third-hand plastic furniture. This—this office had actual wood paneling, plush carpet, and invitingly low lighting. None of the furniture looked new, it might even be called shabby – but it was the sort of shabbiness that came when expertly crafted furniture made of the best materials is lovely used and cared for over the course of centuries.

The office was … _comfortable_.

It had one other occupant, and that wasn’t who Mephistopheles had expected to see, either.

Usually Satan’s form was chosen for maximum intimidation – gigantic body, red skin, leathery wings, crown of horns. But the person at the desk didn’t look anything like that. (Satan’s usual form probably wouldn’t have physically fit in the office.) This was a man-shaped being, dark-haired with wide-set pale blue eyes and high cheekbones. He looked … very human.

And yet he was about as human as Mephistopheles was avian.

Satan looked up. “Duke Hastur. And …?”

“Mephistopheles, Your Lowliness,” Hastur said, shoving Mephistopheles forward. “The other demon what was topside and saw the … spawn.”

“Ah, yes, of course. Mephistopheles. Do sit down.” Satan gestured to one of the two chairs opposite the desk.

Not trusting his voice, Mephistopheles nodded, drew the chair out with shaking hands, and collapsed into it.

Satan pushed aside the parchment he’d been writing on; Mephistopheles, who had trained himself to read upside-down in seven human languages and all three of the common runes of Hellspeak, barely dared to glance at it. Reading it would have meant taking his eyes off the infernal adversary before him. Who had folded his hands, fixed those strange, pale blue eyes on Mephistopheles, and—

Smiled?

“I’ve already spoken to Legion, but I should like to gain your impression of this – let’s call her a young lady. No need to go into the whole story,” he raised a hand, “I have already been thoroughly briefed on that score, just your thoughts about her.”

“Uh,” Mephistopheles said eloquently, “er, um.”

He heard a low growl come from behind him, but Satan fixed the space over Mephistopheles’s head with a look, and the growl became a choked gurgle.

“She—she was—quiet,” he finally said. That should be safe enough.

“Quiet?” Hastur growled. “Legion said she shouted at them.”

“Well, y-yes – but that was—I mean—” Mephistopheles found himself shooting a beseeching look at Satan, which was probably exactly the wrong thing to do. At least he looked amused. “When—when we all first came into the shop—when we were trying to get them to come quietly—she didn’t say anything. N-not a word. The angel had something to say, and so did the demon Crowley, and her boyfriend had a lot to say, but not her. She just—”

“Stop,” said Satan.

Mephistopheles shut his mouth so quickly that he bit his tongue.

“Go back,” Satan said. “What did you call the wine god?”

“P-pardon?” Mephistopheles asked, even as he realized— _Oh, no._

“Her boyfriend,” Satan said. Now those pale blue eyes were fixed on Mephistopheles, and if Mephistopheles had been currently incorporated, he was sure they would have frozen every drop of blood in that corporation. “You called the wine god her boyfriend. Why?”

He could have deflected. He could have said something about the way they stood or how the wine god kept touching her or even that the young lady had led them, in a roundabout way, to the wine god. But Satan was watching him without a blink in a way that suggested he could see right into Mephistopheles’s soul. So Mephistopheles told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“Sh-she was in his files, sir. All over his files.”

“His _what_?” Hastur roared. He grabbed Mephistopheles by the hair and hauled him half out of the chair. “When the Heaven did you—”

“Hastur.” Satan’s tone was even, almost casual, except for the tiny undercurrent of authority running through it.

“He didn’t say _anything_ about this at our meeting, Your Lowliness!” Hastur said, flapping his hands—including the one still tangled in Mephistopheles’s hair.

“I d-d-didn’t— _ow_!—know!”

“Then when did you find out?” Hastur shouted, shaking Mephistopheles.

“Hastur,” Satan said again, in a tone that suggested that he would not be saying this a third time. “What have I said about manhandling lesser demons in my presence?”

Hastur didn’t answer. But he did let go of Mephistopheles, who fell back to the chair with a bump.

Satan didn’t look at him. He kept that unblinking gaze fixed on Hastur. And sighed. “Go.”

“S-s-sir—”

“Your presence is no longer required, Duke, and I should prefer not to have your odor befoul my office any longer. _Go_.” Satan leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers together. “And if you leave quickly, I may decide that Prince Beelzebub has no need to learn of this indiscretion.”

That got Hastur moving. Mephistopheles didn’t dare turn around, but he heard Hastur’s heavy tread quickly retreat as well as the door opening and shutting behind him.

Satan sighed. “Middle managers …” He shook his head and fixed the full force of his stare on Mephistopheles.

Mephistopheles gulped.

“Now. You were saying?”

“I—I—uh—”

“About the files,” Satan prodded, and though he sounded patient and even smiled, there was a hint—just a hint—that his patience was finite.

Mephistopheles nearly lost his train of his thought again, but self-preservation won out and he was able to stammer, “I—I looked in the Cabinets. After the meeting. I was curious!”

“Ah, yes, curiosity. The true original sin, no matter what our brethren above may have to say about the matter.” Satan was smiling. It was horrible. “I commend your initiative. So. What did you find?”

Mephistopheles gulped. “She—her name is Ariadne—”

“Ariadne,” Satan repeated. He made a complicated gesture with his left hand, one that Mephistopheles could barely follow and could never hope to repeat. And—

Several enormous, neatly stacked piles of files materialized on the desk. It was a demonic miracle that Mephistopheles and Satan could still look each other in the eye.

Satan’s eyebrows slowly migrated to his hairline. “You read all of these?”

“N-no, sir!” Mephistopheles gasped. “I—there were so many—I couldn’t—”

“But you read some.” It was not a question.

“Y-yes, sir.”

“And? Your impression?” Satan asked as he took the topmost file from the rightmost pile and began to flip through it.

“She’s—quiet.”

Satan stopped flipping long enough to quirk an eyebrow at Mephistopheles.

“If—if you look through the files,” he stammered, “I noticed that she’s not—doing much. Or s-saying much. She—the wine god takes center stage. Always. I—I can see why the, the writers thought she was a human that the Greeks made into a goddess.”

“Can you,” Satan mused. “But?”

“S-sir?”

“You are no fool, Mephistopheles.” Satan smiled, and it was an altogether too-knowing smile. “Do you know how your personnel files describe you?”

Mephistopheles shook his head.

“As _quiet_. Yet you’ve had some rather stunning successes. So I ask you, Mephistopheles, as a quiet person … what do you think of this Ariadne?”

Mephistopheles felt his jaw hang open. But he had to answer. Somehow. “S-sir, she … well, here’s the—here’s the thing. She—her boyfriend is big and strong and powerful, right? So—so why does she need to say things? He—he takes all the attention just by being, well, him. Everyone’s going to look at him. So if she’s smart—she stays quiet, acts like she b-barely has any power, and …”

“And?”

Mephistopheles’s throat was dry, but he forced the words out anyway. “Nobody’s going to look at her. Nobody’s going to think about her. So if—if there’s something her boyfriend c-can’t get them out of—”

“Nobody will be expecting her to pack a punch,” Satan concluded. “Or perhaps, given her parentage, I should say a bite?”

Mephistopheles was too relieved to do anything other than nod.

“As I thought,” Satan said, his gaze going back to the file before him. “Very good, Mephistopheles, I simply wished—”

He stopped.

He frowned.

Mephistopheles gripped the armrests of the chair to restrain himself from hiding under the first desk or table he could find.

“Did you happen to look at the dates on these files?” Satan asked.

“I—I did.”

“And what conclusion did you draw?”

Mephistopheles gulped. “She’s been around a w-while.”

The look Satan turned to him was so withering that Mephistopheles found himself gasping, “I’m not good with d-dates, sir! I—I wasn’t sure how long it was!”

“Ah,” Satan said, and the withering look was gone, replaced with an understanding nod. “Of course. These files,” he gestured, “predate Exodus by hundreds of years. I believe they were authored at the beginning of the Egyptian captivity, when we first began to evaluate the other gods in the lands near ours.”

Mephistopheles swallowed and nodded, because he didn’t know what else to do.

“And this Ariadne was already a known favorite of the wine god by that point. That means …”

What that meant Mephistopheles apparently wasn’t to know, because Satan stopped speaking. Instead, he fixed Mephistopheles with a speculative look. “Is there anything else you would regret not having shared with me now?”

Mephistopheles shook his head. He didn’t have the courage to lie to Satan’s face. But—well, regarding Ariadne, there really wasn’t anything, and hopefully that would be enough.

Satan watched him for ten seconds … twenty … thirty, then briskly nodded and drew another paper toward him. “I believe you were previously incorporated?”

The change of subject left Mephistopheles reeling, but he answered anyway. “Yes, sir.”

“And discorporated by this Ariadne.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How did you find your corporation?”

Mephistopheles blinked a few times.

Satan sighed. “Where there any obvious flaws with it? Things you would want rectified? Specifications you would like to have changed?”

“Oh! No, s-sir. It was a very functional corporation. I liked it.”

“Excellent.” Satan signed the paper with a flourish and snapped his fingers. It burned to ash with a stink of brimstone. “Head to the corporation office. By the time you get there, they should have a new corporation waiting for you, matching the specifications of your old one.”

Mephistopheles goggled.

Satan sighed and rolled his eyes. “You may _go_ , Mephistopheles.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. “Thank you, sir!” he said, jumping out of the chair and heading toward the door.

“Oh, and Mephistopheles?”

Mephistopheles froze.

“If I should find out that you shared one word of this conversation with any other demon – even Duke Hastur, Prince Beelzebub, or another member of management – I shall be most displeased. And I assure you, you do not wish to deal with my … displeasure.”

Mephistopheles gulped. “Yes, sir. Understood, sir!”

“I am glad of it. Enjoy your new corporation.”

“Th-thank you!” And Mephistopheles bowed and fled.

As he loped away, trying to find a corridor that would lead to the corporation office, he allowed one thought – just one – to flit through his mind.

_At least he didn’t say I couldn’t talk about this to angels …_

* * *

[1] There is a difference between “growing on trees” and “frequently falling out of trees,” but someone with as shaky a grasp of biology as Samael should not be expected to fully appreciate it.

[2] Luckily, they weren’t on hoverboards. If they’d been on hoverboards, Samael would have known that the jig was up, that the Almighty knew about Mephistopheles and everything else, and there was nothing to do but commence groveling or simply fling herself down the elevator shaft and save everyone some time.

[3] Putting several canyon walls to shame in the process.

[4] Psalm 22:2, Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34.

[5] Not that Samael had had much sympathy for him. Hell might have been a hellish place to work, but compared to the mostly wide-open expanse of Heaven, it sounded like a dream to defend.

[6] Because of course an archangel could only use the biblical typing method.

[7] Ariadne was doing her best not to think about Eris. Thinking about Eris would mean thinking about how she’d blown up at the café, and she wasn’t ready to think about that yet.

[8] Not that not getting involved ever saved them. See: Ares, _Wonder Woman_ , and objections to David Thewlis and that mustache.

[9] This, you may be expecting, is the part where The Author makes a joke at the expense of Hell’s coffee, perhaps comparing it to oil sludge or remarking on the state of the coffee maker and the last time it was(n’t) cleaned. That will not be happening, because as The Author knows very well, the less that is said about Hell’s coffee, the better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
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> 
> Next update should be heading your way on Thursday!


	15. Gotta Get Me a Game Plan

Getting everyone to agree that they couldn’t stay in Tadfield forever had been Ariadne’s first step. It had not been difficult. When arguing with a group of immortals, “forever” took on a quite literal meaning, and one thing every immortal learned very quickly was that there were very few things worth doing _forever_.

Getting everyone to agree on where to move next had been more difficult. Dionysus had been all for Los Angeles; Aziraphale had been much more skeptical; Crowley had been willing to be convinced. And once Crowley had been convinced, Aziraphale had gone along.

Speaking of going along – Eris would be doing that, too. And Anathema and Newt had considered it (Anathema pointing out that she could just stay with her parents, who lived in Malibu), since neither of them cared to tangle with angry angels or demons on their own. But Eris had said that wouldn’t be necessary – she had “a friend” who was “in the area” and who could keep an eye on Anathema and Newt, providing extra backup in case things went wrong.

“Don’t worry,” Eris had said when Newt had blanched and Anathema had raised an eyebrow, “he’ll keep things low key.”

That just made Ariadne worry more, but she had bigger things to worry about. Such as working out when they’d cut and run.

That was when she ran into the brick wall known as Aziraphale, because Aziraphale absolutely refused to make a move until Crowley was healed. And Crowley had agreed, in his own peculiar fashion.

“After all, if we make a move before I’m out of thisss,” he had said, jerking his head toward the sling, “ssssomebody who is not me will have to drive my car – and there’sss nobody in thissss room that I trussst.”

Ariadne was no Leonidas. When she saw a battle she couldn’t win, she retreated.

But a tactical retreat was not the same thing as a total capitulation. So they wouldn’t leave until Crowley was healed. That was fair enough. But just because they were staying in Tadfield didn’t mean that they had to sit on their hands. There were things they could do. Trails they could lay. Cards they could play.

And if Ariadne had anything to say about it – they’d play every last card until all they had left was the ace up their collective sleeve, and that was when they’d cut and run.

* * *

The way Eris saw it, a moderately smart person who was attempting to run away would try to convince their enemies that they were staying put. That way, the enemy would attack the place you weren’t.

Which was all well and good if you wanted to be moderately smart. But what was better was to misdirect the enemy not just to a place where you weren’t – but to a place where you had never been.

That was why Eris, Anathema, and Newt were sitting in a first-class lounge at Heathrow, waiting to board the 12:10 flight to Athens.

Not that any of them looked like themselves. Anathema had been magicked into Crowley’s shape and Newt into Aziraphale’s. And Eris …

Well, Eris had _wanted_ to go as Lucy Ricardo, but the way Dionysus had shouted, “You are _not_ going out in public in black and white!” had put the kibosh on that. So Eris had compromised and gone as Lucille Ball instead. Same signature poodle cut, same polka-dot dress with apron, same pearl necklace, same classic 1950s heels, only in living color.

Her face was also a dead ringer for dear Lucille’s, because honestly, if you were going to try to cross international borders in an I-Love-Lucy getup, why not go all in? It wasn’t as if Eris’s documents wouldn’t look exactly the way she wanted them to look and say exactly what she wanted them to say. It was only the very foolish security guard who dare to bat an eye at them.[1]

So Eris was fine. Eris was all set. Eris could be Lucille until the cows came home.

She was a little less sure about her companions.

Anathema seemed to have caught on to the fundamental tenets of being Crowley, folding her body into the chair in a way that bore only a very strained relationship to sitting. She held her phone loosely, but kept her eyes on it, and altogether acted like she was far too cool for any of this. If Crowley could see her, he’d probably have a dozen things to criticize … but he’d also probably be mortally offended, so that meant that Anathema had to be on the right track.

Newt … well, he was sitting up straight. More or less. And he had a book open in his lap. It looked old, too, and mildewed. And that was where the resemblance to Aziraphale ended. Because while Crowley insisted that Aziraphale could sit so long with a good book that he started to gather dust (and Aziraphale had pursed his lips together and frowned but hadn’t _argued_ ), Newt couldn’t keep his eyes on the page for more than five seconds. He kept looking up, looking around, glancing over first one shoulder and then the other.

“Would you relax?” Anathema said, elbowing Newt. The voice was right, the accent was right – Greek god shapeshifting would do that for you – but the gesture was wrong, and so was the choice of words. “There’s nothing the angels or demons could do to us that would stick. They _said_.”

“ _You’re_ not the one who’s going to get Hellfire tossed at them,” Newt hissed. “If anyone’s tossing anything. They’d just dump water on you!”

“Holy Water,” Anathema said, “and you don’t know that. They both seemed to think that their … former coworkers weren’t going to go for the obvious weapons.”

Yes, they _had_ said that, and Eris would very much like to know why.

But Aziraphale and Crowley had been quite insistent that most if not all the weapons favored by the forces of Heaven and Hell couldn’t do much, if anything, to a human – even something as lethal-sounding as Hellfire. And if any avenging angels or demons should happen to be packing other types of weapons …

Well. That was what Eris was there for.

“And what about the—” Newt started, and stopped. His jaw fell open as his gaze focused on something behind and above Eris’s head. “What on earth?”

“What?” Anathema asked, looking up. The sunglasses made it hard to know where she was looking, but there was no hiding that dropped jaw. “Huh?”

With reactions like that, Eris had to look. She squirmed in the seat and looked around—

What caught her eye was the TV, and her first thought was that somebody had decided to put on a nature documentary instead of the inevitable airport news. And she could applaud that decision, really. Being in an airport was depressing enough without being reminded of how the world was constantly going to shit.[2]

Then Eris looked closer.

What she was watching wasn’t a herd of pure white horses running through the surf.

What she was watching was a herd of pure white horses coming out of the surf, manifesting as the cresting waves crashed against the shore.

“Did—did Adam get upset again?” Anathema asked, turning back to her phone and poking at the screen.

“Not likely,” Eris said. “Nothing to worry about. It’s probably just my uncle.”

Anathema and Newt froze.

“I’m sorry, your _what_?” Newt asked.

“Uncle. Father’s brother? Well, technically mother’s brother, too, because it’s all relative in the Greek pantheon … _anyway_. That,” Eris nodded toward the TV screen, “has Poseidon written all over it.”

Anathema paused in her typing. She actually looked at Eris over the sunglasses. “Um. What?”

Eris rolled her eyes. “God of horses. God of the sea. What better way to remind the mortals that he’s still alive and kicking than to … make some horses come out of the sea?”

Newt tilted his head to one side. “Why would he want to remind people that he was alive and kicking?”

_Aw, shit._ She probably shouldn’t have said that. Her mother would have a fit.

_Eh, she’ll survive._

Eris sat up straighter, fluffed her skirt over her knees, even crossed her legs. “So,” she started, “the thing is—”

She stopped.

Her trouble-sense was dinging.

“The thing is?” Newt asked, but Eris held up a finger and shook her head.

Now Anathema was sitting up, too, and—yeah, that would break character, no question about it. Eris wasn’t even sure if Crowley’s spine worked like that. He probably could have done an _Exorcist_ -approved 360-degree head spin if he’d really put his mind to it, and here Anathema was, actually turning her head and looking from side to side like a normal mortal.

Best to nip this in the bud. Eris leaned back, tapped her perfectly lacquered nails on the back of the seat beside her, let her eyes go unfocused, and trusted her instincts.

_There_ , she thought, and—oh, _that_ was trouble, all right. Eris could only imagine how much magic the three demons (and they _had_ to be demons; Eris didn’t know much about angels but she was pretty sure they weren’t into wild makeup, dirty clothes whose rips may or may not have been artful, or a general all-black aesthetic) lurking near the entrance of the lounge were burning to keep from being tossed out on their asses by airport security.

They weren’t doing anything, yet, which could be good or bad. They were masking their auras, but aura-masking didn’t work on Eris’s trouble-sense – she might not know _what_ a thing was, but she knew _how much_ _trouble_ it was, and that was really all she needed to know. But the amount of trouble she was picking up on was nothing she couldn’t handle.

But weirdly, they weren’t looking at Anathema and Newt, who Eris would have guessed would be their number one and number two targets.

They were looking at Eris. Drinking her in. Eris almost raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, but thought better of it. Best not to let them know she’d seen them.

So she leaned back again, took a deep breath and grounded herself in her surroundings. She let her senses blanket the room once, twice, three times.

The only trouble she could sense continued to come from the demons.[3]

“’Scuse me,” she said, uncrossing her legs and rising in a fluid motion that might or might not have given everyone facing her a glimpse of Lucy’s underwear.[4] “Got some ass to kick.”

“But—but the plane—we’re boarding in—” Newt started.

“ _Relax_ , lizard,” Eris said, tossing a million-watt smile over her shoulder. “There’s no way that plane is taking off without me.”

Anathema’s eyebrows practically crawled up her face, but she eventually sighed and shook her head. “At least we have a direct flight.”

Eris chuckled and sashayed to the entrance of the lounge. What she needed to do was find someplace she could confront three demons with as few pesky mortals as possible getting in the way. In other words, what she needed was privacy in an airport.

Good thing she loved a challenge.

She walked right by the demons ( _definitely_ demons, they smelled like someone had let one gloriously rip, and as everyone knew, brimstone and sulfur were the same thing, and sulfur smelled like farts) and was not disappointed in their reaction. Eyes locked on her, nudging, even whispering to each other. Did they think she was blind?

She kept walking, not pausing as she dug the compact mirror out of her purse and flipped it open. Yep – she was being followed.

Eris looked left … looked right …

There was a ladies’ room right in front of her. The demons behind her weren’t all presenting as female, but she doubted a little thing like gender presentation would stop them if they really wanted to follow her.

Now all she had to do was clear the space. Eris made a complicated gesture with her left hand.

And waited.

“Unbelievable!” huffed the first woman to stomp out of the bathroom. “Every toilet in the place out of order!”

“What?” asked the first woman in line.

“Are you kidding me?” asked the second.

Eris folded her arms and smirked as the devastating news made its way down the line. Soon, the line was gone. Eris waved once and a generic “Out of Order” sign appeared on the door.

She gave it five more minutes to let anyone who was already in there finish their business and get out. Then she went in, ducked into a stall, and climbed onto the toilet.

She waited.

She heard the door open. Heard three sets of footsteps come in.

“Where do you think she went?” asked one voice.

“ _Shhh_!”

“Look for feet under the stalls,” said the third.

Eris smirked. And waited.

One set of footsteps went past her. Then two. Then three.

“Where can she _be_?”

“We might have to blow a few doors down.”

“Do you think she went invisible?”

“… _Can_ she go invisible?”

Eris wrinkled her nose. Who the heck did they think she was?

One way to find out.

Eris waved the door to the stall open, jumped down, and sashayed out. The exit was at her back, trapping the demons between her and the wall.

Just as she’d planned it.

“Looking for me?”

One of the demons shrieked. All three of them whirled around.

Eris grinned. She had a speech planned. Or something _like_ a speech. It would definitely involve the words “smiting” and “kingdom come” just to watch the demons piss themselves. She might have even magicked up a little squirt gun for her purse so she could threaten them with “Holy Water.”

She didn’t get a chance to use any of it.

“You,” breathed one of the demons – a short one with greasy black hair and very sharp teeth. “You’re _her_ , aren’t you?”

Eris blinked.

“Eh?”

“Everyone’s been talking about you,” said the demon, stepping forward even as her friends (colleagues? Coworkers? Brothers in stupidity?) tried to draw her back. “Ever since—well. Ever since we found out about you! Are you—are you really her?”

_What the fuck are they—_

_Oh._

_Oh good Gaia._

Eris drew her hand down her face and tried not to groan.

They thought she really was Lucille Ball!

… Actually, she could work with that.

Eris let her hand drop and grinned. Not an Eris grin, a Lucy-thinks-she’s-going-to-get-away-with-it grin. She put her hand on her hip and cocked her head to one side.

“Well, who else would I be?” she asked.

One of the demons – a tall, dark-skinned one – squeaked. Actually _squeaked_.

“You really are her,” said the third one with a grin that might have been shit-eating if it wasn’t so honestly gleeful. “You have no idea how much we wanted to meet you!”

“And ask some questions,” said the first one.

The tall one had half-buried her face in her turtleneck, but she was nodding vigorously.

“Ask away,” said Eris. “But be quick about it. I’ve got a plane to catch.”

“You can catch planes?” asked the second one, eyes goggling.

“… Figure of speech,” Eris said. Clearly, the denizens of Hell needed to get out more.

There was a great deal of wise nodding in response to that, which Eris interpreted as complete and utter confusion paired with an inability to admit said confusion. “So,” asked the first one, “what can you do?”

Eris blinked.

“What can I do? What can—oh!”

She grinned. Maybe a bit of Eris slipped through in that grin, because all three of the demons took a quick step back. Oh well.

“Hello, friends!” she said. “I’m your Vitameatavegamin girl. Are you tired, run down, listless? Do you poop out of parties? Are you unpopular? The answer to all your problems is in this little bottle.”

She reached into her purse and pulled out a giant prescription pill bottle that should not, strictly speaking, have fit into it in the first place.

“Vitameatavegamin! Vitameatavegamin contains vitamins, meat, vegetables, and minerals. Yes, with Vitameatavegamin, you can _spoon_ your way to health. All you do is take a tablespoon full after every meal.”

She pulled a tablespoon out of her purse and poured some goop onto the spoon.

“It’s so tasty, too!”

She popped the spoon into her mouth.

And made a face. But not just a face. The kind of face someone would make if they swallowed a tablespoon full of cough syrup when expecting ice cream. She even made sure to shudder as it all went down.

“Just like candy!” she said, and it wasn’t convincing in the least – she made sure of it.

Then she held the bottle up again. “So why don’t you join the thousands of happy peppy people and get a great big bottle of Vitameatavegamin tomorrow? That’s Vita-meata-vegamin.”

Eris finished with the biggest grin she could muster.

What she got in response were three very confused looks.

“Oh, come on!” She pouted, putting both hands on her hips. “That was good! And it’s one of the most famous sketches!”

“… Come again?” asked the first demon, the short one.

“Philistines, the lot of you,” Eris sighed and shook her head. “What am I—”

She didn’t get a chance to finish that sentence. A voice over the loudspeaker stopped that for her.

“ _This is the final boarding call for British Airways Flight 606, nonstop service to Athens. All passengers should report to the gate at once._ ”

“Whoops!” Eris said. “That’s me! Gotta run, boys—boy—and girls!”

“Whoa, whoa, wait!” said the third demon. “We still—”

Eris didn’t wait. She snapped her fingers.

And at least a dozen toilets exploded.

“Have fun!” Eris called, even as the demons shrieked and danced away from the water. “Water may or may not be holy!”

And with that, she sprinted out the bathroom, pausing only long enough to magic herself dry and her hair back into place before power-walking back to the gate.

After all, as she’d told the demons, she had a plane to catch.

* * *

At about the time Anathema, Newt, and Eris left their hotel in Athens to head to the airport and fly back, Dionysus and Aziraphale were waiting at the small Tadfield train station, laying their own false trail.

Dionysus, disguised as Crowley, leaned against a pole and did his best embody the role. He itched to move, to pace up and down the platform, but he wouldn’t do that. He was too keyed up. Even in the shifted body and too-tight pants, his stride would be loping, feline, not … whatever it was that Crowley did when he attempted to move from point A to point B.

This was why he hated pretending to be a person. A character was one thing – even with a character with baggage, like an Oedipus or a Willy Loman or a Hamlet, audiences knew damn well that what you were putting in front of them was an interpretation. You weren’t supposed to get it “right”; there was no right to get. Whereas with an actual person, a living one or one that hadn’t been dead for that long …

Well. There was a _reason_ why biopics were award bait.

“You don’t have to be so still,” Aziraphale said, quietly, so he wouldn’t be overheard. And he smiled, looking almost understanding. “Crowley’s usually on the move. Circling. Keeping an eye out.”

Dionysus took a deep breath, but considering that Aziraphale was the director in this little play they were staging for the benefit of gods-knew-who … he moved. Circled. Hoped he was getting the pacing and the stride right.

When he finally came to a stop at Aziraphale’s side, Aziraphale made a small noise of disapproval. “Er—usually it’s the other side.”

Dionysus’s eyebrows arched, and he reminded himself that the director having a clear vision was always a good thing. He ambled to Aziraphale’s left side. “Demon on the left, angel on the right?” he asked, attempting to shove his hands into his pockets. (There was not enough pocket to do so successfully.)

“Mmm. Not really. Sword arm free is more like it.”

Dionysus did a double-take. “ _Sword_?”

Aziraphale looked up mildly. “Well, I haven’t got it with me now.”

“You. Have a _sword_ arm.”

Now Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you have a dominant hand?”

He did, but that wasn’t the point. “I don’t call it my sword arm. And I know that people who do …” He shrugged, turning it into a roll of the shoulders that was trying desperately, and utterly failing, to be nonchalant. “Let’s just say, they can all reliably kick my ass without breaking a sweat.”

Aziraphale smiled and chuckled. “Oh, come now. I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

“Ever hear of Ares? Athena? _Artemis **[5]**_? And that’s just the letter A.”

Something like a smile twitched at the corner of Aziraphale’s mouth, but he didn’t have a chance to say anything before the platform was engulfed in the squeal of brakes and the letting-off of steam. “Ah,” Aziraphale said as soon as the din allowed, “that would be us. Mind the gap, my dear.”

Dionysus glanced sidelong at Aziraphale, but all he was able to see was the back of the angel’s head. Well, Aziraphale called everyone “my dear.” If he ever called Dionysus “dear boy,” _then_ he’d be in trouble.[6]

They’d purchased a pair of first-class tickets that would get them to Inverness just in time to change appearances and turn right back around. Perhaps it would have been wiser to leave their false trail farther afield, but Inverness was as far away as they could go on major rail lines without having to leave the island. And neither of them was eager to leave the island.

They found their seats quickly enough, Dionysus constructing a wall of leave-us-alone that would keep other passengers from sitting too close or attempting anything as cruel as small talk. Dionysus threw himself into the seat and tried to find a way to sprawl/lounge that wouldn’t lead to a backache before the end of fifteen minutes. It was not nearly as difficult as he thought it would be. Were Crowley’s bones made of cartilage? Did he have a few extra joints thrown in?

Aziraphale, of course, sat up straight and almost immediately pulled a book out of the small bag he’d brought with him. Dionysus bit back a sigh of relief. Staying in character would be much easier if he didn’t try to keep up a conversation. He fished his phone out of his jacket pocket (magicked to look like Crowley’s, which the phone had not liked one bit) and flipped over to his email.

The email didn’t occupy him for very long, especially since most of it wasn’t anything he absolutely needed to deal with or really could do much about, given his current status of Very Much Occupied Right Now. Although the one from Tom Hiddleston’s publicist’s office, asking if he had any idea what was causing the persistent rumors of the latter’s presence in Oxfordshire, was amusing. Dionysus wondered what sort of desperation had spurred the poor overworked assistant to send that out.

He glanced at the time. They’d barely been in motion for twenty minutes. The train ride was nearly thirteen hours. At least he had a few games on this thing and could use magic to keep it charged.

No sooner had he thought this than the phone buzzed in his hand, loudly enough that Aziraphale looked up from his book. And Hermes’s name and number flashed on the screen.

Dionysus almost answered it. Almost. Then he realized he had no desire to explain why he sounded like a middle-aged Englishman. So he sent the call to voicemail and dashed off a text.

**Can’t talk now. Can text. What’s up?**

Almost immediately the telltale ellipses blinked onto the screen. And in less time than Dionysus would have thought possible, were anyone else on the other end of the proverbial line, a message came through:

**Direct. Male-line. Descendent.**

If there was any doubt as to whom Hermes was talking about, it was resolved with the gif he sent – a man in vaguely seventeenth century clothes, sporting eighties rocker hair, sitting under an apple tree and getting bonked on the head by one of the aforementioned apples.

Newton.

Dionysus didn’t ask if Hermes was sure; he wouldn’t have reached out if he wasn’t sure. Instead, he typed, **Why does male line matter?**

**Logically?** Hermes texted back. **It doesn’t. But this is Pater’s line, so it does. IDK man, I don’t make the rules.**

It took him four texts to say all that, but Dionysus couldn’t have gotten a word in edgewise if he’d tried. And he hadn’t. Even typing with just his thumbs, Hermes had an average speed of infinite words per minute, so it was easiest to just let him get to the end of whatever it was he was trying to say.

**BTW,** Hermes went on, **Aunt Hestia wants in. And by “wants in” I mean she wants to send the kid some baklava and welcome him to the family.**

**You asked her for help?**

**Had to. Nobody else does genealogy like she does.**

Even though he knew Hermes couldn’t see him, Dionysus nodded.

**You sure you don’t want to bring this to Pater? Or at least get some credit?** Hermes asked. **Might help to save your bacon.**

Dionysus sighed and rolled his eyes. **No,** he typed. **This one’s yours**

**All right, kid, your funeral.**

That seemed to be all Hermes needed to say. Dionysus sighed and let his head fall back against the seat.

“Everything all right?” Aziraphale asked, quietly enough that no one beyond their little bubble would hear them.

Dionysus almost jumped. Almost. He held back just in time, channeling the energy that would have made an unfortunate reaction into studied nonchalance. “Didn’t realize I was being that obvious.”

“You forget,” and here Aziraphale smiled, even if he didn’t look up from his book, “I know your face very well.”

_Gaia help me._ Dionysus shifted, digging his shoulder blades into the not-plush-enough seat. “It’s nothing. Just my brother.” _And the fact that my father is going to put my head up over the mantel if I don’t play this exactly right, but hey, what else is new?_

“If you say so,” Aziraphale said in a tone that suggested that he knew damn well there was more to the story than that and that politeness was the only thing that kept him from pressing the issue.

Dionysus went back to his phone, flipping to the “weird shit” feed Hermes had made a few years ago and sent him the link to. He ignored the viral video of some horses playing in the Mediterranean surf in favor of something, anything, that would serve as a distraction.

He found one disturbingly quickly.

Dionysus squinted at one of the most recent articles. This was out of New York, an interview with a nurse at Sloan Kettering, the cancer hospital. Apparently … fewer patients were dying than usual? Why was _that_ showing up in the weird shit feed?

He started scrolling.

_According to Nurse Rao, the strangeness began shortly after her shift did. “I saw this man ducking into a patient’s room just after midnight. He was wearing a toga and carrying a weird staff with what looked like a snake wrapped around it.”_

That paragraph was enough to make Dionysus nearly bolt out of his seat. “What the _fuck_?”

It was almost a shout, but his leave-us-alone wall was good – a few of the mortals jumped, looked around, but none of them looked at him.

Well, except Aziraphale, who didn’t really count as mortal. “D—Crowley? What’s wrong?”

Dionysus thought of explaining, thought better of it, and shook his head. He copied the link and went back into his text messages, pulling up Apollo’s contact with the intent of sending it to him with a _WTF?!?!_ Because there was only _one person_ who would be wandering around a cancer ward at midnight wearing what a mortal would call a toga and carrying a snake-wrapped staff, and _that_ was Apollo’s pain-in-the-ass son—

He didn’t get that far. Aziraphale’s hand on his arm stopped him. “Do you feel that?”

“Feel—” Dionysus started, and stopped.

He did feel that. The first-class car was just empty enough that the four auras – brighter by far than most mortals’, burning like frozen fire – stuck out like sore thumbs.

He opened the camera app and switched to selfie mode, carefully angling the phone so he could see over his shoulder.

_There._

“Don’t look, but we’ve got four angels by the back door,” Dionysus murmured. “How—”

He stopped.

He flipped his sunglasses up and squinted at the phone.

He _recognized_ one of those angels.

“Shit.”

“What?”

“The one who shot Cr—the one who shot _me_ —she’s here.” Dionysus took a deep breath and tapped the nearest outlet, sending his senses sparking along the wires and gathering a few threads of electricity to throw. “So, angel, how do we plan on handling this?”

Aziraphale seemed quite calm, which, now that Dionysus knew about the sword arm, didn’t surprise him as much as it would have yesterday. “I don’t suppose you could freeze time?”

Dionysus blinked. “I’m sorry, _what_?”

“Guess not, then,” Aziraphale murmured. “Only it does help keep the humans from getting into trouble when … well, when we don’t want them to.”

“Principality Aziraphale!”

That was the one – well, one of three – angelic voice Dionysus recognized, and what it said was that the time for dicking around was over.

Well, Aziraphale wanted the mortals out of harm’s way, and that Dionysus could do. He began to wave—no, that wasn’t how Crowley did it, what he did was snap his fingers and move his hand up.

One upward snap later, and all the mortals in the train car slumped in their seats, their BACs having gone from zero to passed-out drunk. Dionysus used the moment of surprise to swing himself out of his seat.[7] “Sorry, Principality Aziraphale can’t come to the phone right now; instead you get to deal with his pissed de—his pissed- _off_ demon boyfriend.” Right, Crowley was English, and _pissed_ meant something rather different on this side of the pond.

None of the angels seemed to notice the slip, being too focused on the mortals. “What did you _do_?” demanded one of the male-looking ones, a black angel with an afro.

“Nothing you need to worry your haloes about,” Dionysus said, crossing his arms. “Now are you going to leave this car quietly, or do I need to throw you off the train myself?”

“I’d like to see you try, demon,” snapped the tallest angel of the lot. “It’s four on one!”

“Two,” said a quiet voice to Dionysus’s left. And in the silence that followed, Aziraphale got up and came to stand at Dionysus’s right.

_Sword arm free_ , Dionysus thought with a smirk that, had he been able to see it, would have struck him as _very_ Crowley.

“You sure you want to mess with us? You especially?” Dionysus turned his attention to gun-angel, flipping his sunglasses down so he could give her a full yellow-eyed demon stare. “Last I checked, when we last tangled, _you_ and your idiot friends were blown to … what’s that poetic phrase … ah, yes, _kingdom come_.”

“Not until after I shot you!” gun-angel snapped, her nostrils flaring.

“And yet, here I stand.” Dionysus said, throwing his arms wide (and nearly hitting Aziraphale). “In the flesh.”

“First corporation he was ever issued, too,” Aziraphale said with a very faint smile. Dionysus hoped that meant something to the angels, because it didn’t mean anything to him. “Which, much as I don’t like to bring it up, is more than you can say, my dear.”

Gun-angel blushed, but she turned beseeching eyes on Aziraphale. “Please, Principality. We just have questions! About—”

“Don’t care,” Dionysus said. “Stopped caring about your lot a _long_ time ago. Before any of you were ever—uh—hatched?”

Aziraphale blinked and stared at him. “ _Hatched_?”

“Well, how else do you get little angels? You all have wings, makes sense that you’d come from eggs—”

“But see!” said gun-angel. “That’s what we have questions about! How you—”

“My dear,” Aziraphale interrupted, which showed how low on patience he was, “I promise you, whatever questions you have, you won’t like the answers you get from me. And your superiors will like them still less. Are you quite sure you want to ask?”

Gun-angel looked mulish, so Dionysus piled on, “I’ve heard that the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire starts with questions.”

As he’d hoped, all four of the angels jumped. Dionysus twisted the knife with a smirk and a flick of the sunglasses. “But what would I know about that?”

“You—” started tall-angel.

“Are about out of patience, which I’m told is a virtue, so, really, I can’t be having any truck with that, now, _can_ I?” asked Dionysus. “And so, speaking of bonfires, I have to tell you that if you’re not packing heat, you’d best get packing, because …”

Dionysus lifted his left hand and snapped his fingers. “ _I am_.”

It wasn’t Hellfire, of course. Just a regular flame, the sort even Poseidon could conjure with a bit of effort. But it did the job. The angels blanched, and without a further word, all of them ran for the door to the next car.

Dionysus grinned. “Think that’ll keep them out of our hair?”

“One can hope,” Aziraphale said, squinting at the door and making a complicated gesture. Wards. Dionysus would have added his own to them, but had he tried, it would have been obvious to anyone who cared to look just who had set them, and then what would be the point of walking around in this ridiculous body? Instead he occupied himself with waking the mortals up and fixing the liver damage he’d caused.

That done, he and Aziraphale took their seats once again, Aziraphale picking up his book as if nothing had happened. But before he started to read, he frowned. “Primrose way to the everlasting bonfire – where do I know that from?”

“Scottish play,” Dionysus said. “Every now and then, it’s good for something.”

“Ah,” Aziraphale said with a nod. “Yes, of course. The ‘primrose path of dalliance’ is _Hamlet_.”

“Well, well, well.” Now Dionysus had cause to smile, really smile. “I had no idea you could speak my language that well, angel.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Aziraphale said, licking one finger as he thumbed his way back to his place. “After all, it is Greek to me.”

Dionysus threw his head back and laughed. Really laughed. And allowed himself to think that maybe, just maybe, this ridiculous rail trip with an angel wouldn’t be so bad after all.

* * *

“Ssso,” Crowley said. He and Ariadne were standing outside of Jasmine Cottage, steps away from the Bentley. The rest of their motley crew was still seeking out locations known and unknown, laying false trails.

“So,” Ariadne said. She had one hand on her hip, one eyebrow raised, and one quizzical expression that kept volleying between him and the Bentley.

“We need to have a talk, young lady,” Crowley went on, “about what you did to my car.”

Ariadne winced. “Look, I’m sorry about the undercarriage, but I needed to get to the exit quickly, and need I remind you that we were being chased—”

“I’m not worried about the undercarriage,” Crowley said, even he silently cursed the fates and snapped the damage away. “I’m worried about the _ressst_ of it.”

Now Ariadne looked confused. “What rest of it?”

“The modificationsss you made.”

Ariadne blinked slowly, and her eyebrow arched even higher.

Crowley sighed. “The flamethrower? The invisibility cloak? The _ssself-dessstruct_ button?”

Now she looked taken aback. “Wait, what?”

Crowley snapped the doors open. “In— _passssenger_ ssside, thank you,” he added.

Ariadne rolled her eyes at him, but she slipped into Aziraphale’s usual seat. Crowley took the driver’s seat, and oh, that _did_ feel good, even if it was a bit awkward with the sling.

As soon as he got himself settled, he found himself surveying the familiar dashboard – well, what should have been the familiar dashboard. What he found were two extra switches. They were very nice switches, all things considered, looked right at home with the rest of the vintage gages and dials. (The Blaupunkt stood out far more.) One switch was labeled with a flame, the other a lightning bolt.

“You know,” Ariadne murmured, “I did think that was weird.”

“What was weird?”

“The invisibility cloak.” She gestured to the lightning-bolt switch. “I mean, when I was trying to think what it might look like, I said ‘lightning bolt’ because you say ‘invisibility cloak’ and my brain goes straight to Harry Potter – but you had to have had that mod a long time before Harry Potter, right? So why a lightning bolt?”

It was at that point that Crowley realized – well and truly realized – that Ariadne had no idea what she’d done.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and decided to just bloody well go for it. “I never added an invisibility cloak to my car, Ariadne.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Or a flamethrower. Or – and I really hate that I have to keep bringing this up – a _ssself-desstruct_ button.”

“You really are focused on that one button, aren’t you?” Ariadne asked. “We couldn’t even find it!”

If she couldn’t find it … then perhaps it didn’t exist. _That_ would be a relief. The invisibility cloak he could live with, the flamethrower was actually kind of cool, but he did not want to accidentally discorporate himself with an offhand gesture.

“It’s a ssself-dessstruct button! Not like changing the bloody radio station!”

For some reason, that made Ariadne smirk. “Radio station? In 2019?”

“What?”

“Oh, come _on_. The only time I listen to the radio is when I want to know how much traffic I’ll have to magic out of my way if I want to get wherever I’m going on time. I pay for Spotify for a reason.”

“Pay?” Crowley asked.

“Well, you sort of have to, if you want the premium …” Ariadne started. And stopped.

She’d seen his smirk. Must have. Because she answered with a smirk of her own. “Let me guess. Spotify is a few decades ahead of the curve for you, isn’t it?”

Now it was Crowley’s turn to blink. “I _beg_ your pardon?”

“In fact,” _now_ Ariadne’s grin nearly split her face, “I bet you listen to … oh, let’s see … dad rock?”

“And what is that sssupposed to mean?”

“Let’s find out, shall we?” Ariadne said. And pushed the “on” button on the Blaupunkt.

Strictly speaking, it should not have turned on at all, what with the car’s engine being off. But of course it did, because for all of their collective imagination, neither the demon nor the half-demon could imagine a world in which it did not.

So Crowley was not surprised by that. He also was not surprised when the dulcet tones of Messrs. Mercury, May, Deacon and Taylor filled the car.

He was more than a bit surprised by the choice of song and lyrics:

“ _Oh mamma mia, mamma mia! Mamma mia, let me go / Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me_ —”

“For me,” Crowley murmured—and with a yelp, jabbed the radio off and launched himself out of the car, self-destruct button and sling be damned.

“Crowley?” Ariadne asked, following him out through the other side and hurrying around the car. “Are you ok?”

Crowley shook his head and tried to breathe. He didn’t need to breathe, but it was helpful in moments like this.

“What—” Ariadne started, looking over her shoulder at the car. “Did I—is there something wrong with the radio? The car? I—”

“You’re fine,” Crowley said. “It’s not you. You …”

Now he looked back at the Bentley, his beloved Bentley. The one blessed thing, other than Aziraphale, that he’d managed to keep for longer than it took for it to cycle out of fashion. He’d held onto that car for longer than Aziraphale kept some articles of clothing.

But _now_ all he could think about was Satan’s voice coming through the speakers, wearing Freddie Mercury’s timbre and inflection like a well-tailored suit, calling him _darling_ and informing him just what his next infernal assignment would be.

He shuddered.

“Crowley?” asked Ariadne.

Crowley looked up. Ariadne’s eyes were blown wide and she was nervously tucking a curl behind her ear. It was the worst of all looks – worried and trying to hide it.

Crowley reminded himself to breathe. Again.

There was so much he and Aziraphale hadn’t told her. Not because they wanted to keep her ignorant, but because there hadn’t been bloody time. How in Go—Sa— _Someone’s_ name did you go telling six thousand years of history and even _more_ bloody lore and lessons to someone you’d not even known a week?

Well, you didn’t. Especially not when you had to keep running from people who meant you ill. But … Crowley could start to fix that now.

“Have you ever heard a voice talking to you from the radio?” Crowley asked.

Ariadne’s brows knit.

“Not a bloody talk show program,” he went on. “A voice. Sounding just like what you’d heard before, only talking to _you_. Telling _you_ what’s what and what you need to be doing.”

“No,” Ariadne replied. Her voice was quite small.

“Good,” Crowley replied. He took another deep breath. “That’s how—that’s how _they_ ,” he pointed to the ground and raised an eyebrow, not saying another word until Ariadne nodded her understanding, “like to keep in touch with their earthbound agents. Speaking through the radio – television – movies – they haven’t quite figured out the internet yet, thank Someone, although if they ever do—”

“Movies?” Ariadne asked, her voice threaded with a hint of danger.

“Yes, movies, and if your partner decides to get angry about that and bloody well keep them out of his business, you won’t catch me complaining. _Anyway_. If they ever do, you run, you hear me? Get away from whatever thing that’s talking to you at top speed. I don’t care what you have to do or who you have to hurt to do it.”

Ariadne’s eyebrows slowly lifted. “Why?”

He probably deserved that. But what the Heaven, she was an adult and deserved an answer. “Do you know why Aziraphale was the one who brought you to Crete? Trick question, of course you don’t, because we didn’t tell you. The reason is—that is—we decided Aziraphale would be the only one to know where you were because …”

Something in that statement made Ariadne flinch, but Crowley didn’t have time to unpack that now. “I told you earlier that Heaven and Hell would want you dead if they ever found out about you.”

“Yeah,” Ariadne murmured.

“I lied. Well, sort of. Heaven would _definitely_ want you dead. And they’d kill you clean. Nice thing about Heaven; they don’t go much in for long, drawn-out suffering. Well, unless you’ve signed up for martyrdom. Very efficient with their enemies, Heaven is. But Hell?” Crowley went on. “Hell likes to make things last. Likes pain in particular.”

“So—so if they got a hold of me …” Ariadne said. She looked pale – well, paler than usual, considering she’d inherited the ginger from him and the lack of melanin from Aziraphale.

“You would be looking at a very long time in the Pit, and you would enjoy none of it,” Crowley said. “And that’s the best-case scenario.”

Ariadne blinked. “What’s the worst case?”

Crowley swallowed. “Worst case … they don’t want to kill you. They want to _keep_ you. Especially …”

He broke off, once again focusing on breathing. Breathing, and trying not to think.

Because the thing was, despite what maggots-for-brains like Hastur and Ligur might have to say about the matter, Crowley had been very good at his job. In its own way, Hell liked efficiency as much as Heaven did. And Crowley was always efficient where it counted, bringing in numbers that crushed the rest of the Temptation department – and while, yes, some of that was him taking credit for things that humans had come up with themselves, the point was no one else came close.

And Satan … he didn’t _like_ Crowley; Crowley wasn’t sure Satan was capable of liking anybody. But Satan liked results. And he was prepared to be charming to the getters-of-results. And he was always, always trying to replicate those results.

And if he found out that Crowley had a daughter … especially a daughter in any way like him, as that chase through London had bloody well proven …

Crowley shuddered, a full-body thing that started at the crown of his head and didn’t stop until it had exited his corporation via his toes, several times.

“My old boss,” Crowley said, pointing insistently downward, begging Ariadne to understand without him having to say the name and risk drawing his attention, “is going to be looking to fill a spot on the team now that I’ve been, let’s say, fired.”

“And,” Ariadne licked her lips and swallowed a few times, “he’d make me an offer I couldn’t refuse?”

“No,” Crowley replied. “He’d tear your mind down and build it back up again, brick by brick, all in his image, so you couldn’t even _think_ to refuse.”

Ariadne, if it were possible, went even paler. “So – so stay away from …” She pointed down.

“Bingo.”

“Ok,” Ariadne said. She took a deep breath. “Ok.” She looked over her shoulder. “I think … maybe we should go inside? You know. Before anyone gets any ideas.”

“Probably not a bad idea.” Between the human wards, the angelic wards, the demonic wards, and the Olympian wards, if Satan could get to them in Jasmine Cottage … well, they were all in very big trouble, and that was putting it lightly.

“And maybe we could grab some lunch,” Ariadne went on. “It’s about that time, isn’t it?”

Crowley shrugged; one meal was much the same as another to him. “Sounds good to me, as long as you don’t start any hot beverages by boiling water in the microwave.”

“Nah,” she replied. “I’ve been magically making water boil since my Maenad days. When a microwave can do it in microseconds, _then_ we’ll talk.”

“Fine by me, but don’t let Aziraphale hear you talk like that. It’s a blessed kettle or nothing for him.”

“Noted,” Ariadne said, with a nod that tried to be serious but that couldn’t hide the mischief in her eyes.

And Crowley was glad of it. It wasn’t cheerful, but after the conversation they’d just had?

Crowley would take what he could get. 

* * *

[1] Not least because any idiot security personnel who tried to investigate would find that their computers were suddenly infested with the most embarrassing porn out there, which would self-send to all of their colleagues if investigations continued. Starting with the boss.

[2] Especially since the world was not, in fact, going to shit. Eris had seen the world go to shit. More than once. Minor issue of the almost-Apocalypse aside, the world was doing better than it ever had.

[3] Well, not the _only_ trouble. But Eris was pretty sure that the two-year-old who had missed her nap wasn’t an angel in disguise, so she was discounting the massive helping of trouble coming from that quarter.

[4] Which was the only part of her disguise that wasn’t straight out of Desilu Productions.

[5] Not that Artemis called it a sword arm. Bow-arm was more her style. But she could definitely kick Dionysus’s ass.

[6] Or acting better than he thought he was, depending on whose body he was wearing at the time.

[7] And nearly fell flat on his face because mortal legs were not supposed to move that way; who had designed this ridiculous excuse for a body?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
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> 
> Stay tuned for the next update on Saturday!


	16. Hammer to Fall

“This is getting out of hand,” Gabriel said, striding into the meeting late. “We’ve scarcely known about that … _thing_ for an Earth-week, and already we’ve had three unauthorized trips to the surface! And those are just the ones we know about!”

Samael leaned back in her chair and schooled her face into as neutral an expression as she could. So there had been more trips than just the one she’d been briefed on. She wished she could say she was surprised.

If anything, it was comforting. Archangel or no, she’d known herself to be odd for millennia now. She doubted there many other angels who made a mutually-assured-destruction pact with a demon.[1] Yet when she and Mephistopheles had put two and two together about the traitors’ child, they’d both wanted to know more. And this sentiment was shared. Remarkable.

Gabriel, however, would not be sharing it, so Samael kept all those thoughts locked firmly in her own head.

“Make that four,” Uriel said, throwing another paper into the pile on the table between them all. “These ones from the traitor’s old platoon, believe it or not.”

Gabriel froze. “I thought all thoughts of rebellion began and ended with the traitor.”

“We thoroughly debriefed them after Armaged—well, what _ought_ to have been Armageddon,” Michael replied. “And there was no hint of unrest in the ranks then. But that was before we found out about this.”

“And apparently now is when curiosity got the best of them,” murmured Uriel.

“Were they able to find the traitor or the young lady?” Samael asked.

All the archangels – and the Metatron, who’d been invited to the meeting but had yet to say a word – turned to Samael. “What?” she asked, rolling her shoulders testily. “Intelligence is intelligence.”

Michael sighed. “No,” she admitted. “The only ones who got close were the interns, who found the demon and the traitor on a train heading to Scotland. But there was no sign of the young lady. However …”

Those three syllables were enough to make everyone around the table lean forward, even the Metatron, who sometimes seemed just one stray eye-blink away from dozing off during their meetings.[2]

“I spoke with our counterparts Down Below, and it appears that one of their unauthorized trips to the surface brought back intelligence that the traitor, the demon, and a red-haired young woman were spotted in an airport near London.”

“Red-haired young woman?” Gabriel asked, leaning forward.

“Yes, but …” Michael sighed and drew something out of her folder. “One of them was able to get this photograph, and …”

Once again, all the archangels (and the Metatron) leaned forward. This time, Samael wrinkled her nose. The redhead’s hair was too light; the body shape was all wrong; and the face wasn’t even close. “That’s not her,” she said, looking up.

“Precisely,” Michael said.

“But where were they going?” Gabriel asked. “I thought the traitors were on a train to Scotland.”

“Yes, well, that’s where it gets even, er, better,” Michael said. “From what our counterparts could piece together, they were about to board a plane to Athens.”

“The one in America or the one in Greece?” Sandalphon asked.

Michael’s tight smile and the frown lines between her brows said without words that they hadn’t been able to find out.

“Fantastic,” Gabriel said, leaning back and drawing a hand over his face. “Just – fantastic. We’ve got two sightings of them heading in opposite directions.”

“Quite,” Michael said.

“Any luck with the observation files?” Gabriel asked Uriel.

“We’ve pulled every file with the traitor or the demon in it. Nothing so far.” Uriel shook her head. “I’m tempted to say that we don’t have any observations on her at all.”

“We have observations on everything,” Sandalphon pointed out. “We’re supposed to be watching everything!”

“We are meant to watch what comes under our dominion,” Michael replied. “Which, lately, has been most of the planet. But before …”

Silence stretched over the table. Samael forced herself to stay still. If Mephistopheles’s intelligence was correct – which she thought it was – then Ariadne had come into being almost two thousand years before their dominion began to expand out of what humans now called the Middle East. And it didn’t matter how many times she showed up in the files afterward. The archangels didn’t know how or where to search for her, so they’d never find her.

Samael hated to do it, but she had to admit that the traitor (or the demon, or both) had been far smarter than she’d ever given him credit for.

“So it’s been a week,” Gabriel said, “and what you’re telling me is that, essentially, we don’t know anything more than we knew when Uriel plucked that memory out of Liel’s head.”

“Essentially,” Michael agreed.

“And even though we don’t know a damn thing, we’re getting insubordination left, right, and center, and that’s just the insubordination we know about,” Gabriel went on. Without warning, he turned to the Metatron. “Have you spoken to the Almighty yet?”

The Metatron jumped. “I—er—well, that is, I of course conveyed our, er, concerns and tribulations to the Almighty …”

“And?” Gabriel prodded.

“She has not, er, replied,” the Metatron admitted. “I am sure She will, of course. In Her own good time. We—simply must be patient.”

“Patience is a virtue,” Uriel said, and though Uriel said that often, Samael wondered when that catchphrase had gone from being a reassurance to others and when it had begun to sound like Uriel was trying to convince herself.

“A virtue taken too far can become a sin,” Gabriel replied. “Are we being patient, or are we just being slothful?”

Samael stiffened, and slowly, slowly shifted her gaze to him. The last time she had heard an angel speak of virtues and sins sliding into each other that easily …

Her blood ran cold. And judging by the temperature of Michael’s tone, she wasn’t the only one. “And what do you mean by that, brother?”

“Can we afford to wait for the Almighty’s time?” Gabriel asked. “The Almighty didn’t answer us when the Great Plan fizzled. So we decided to act.”

“And that went very poorly,” Uriel pointed out, shuddering. Which she should, since the traitor had blown a stream of Hellfire directly into her face.

“Well, we had to do _something_!” Sandalphon said. “Otherwise we could have had a second Rebellion!”

“And we need to do something now,” Gabriel said. “The traitor and the demon have been nothing but trouble since they were sent to Earth. And now they have a spawn that’s nothing but trouble. We need to nip this in the bud before we have another faction of angels go rogue and align themselves with Hell, tipping the balance—”

“Gabriel, were you not listening to a word I was saying earlier?” Michael snapped. “Hell is having the same problem. The lower – higher – _whatever_ , the demons doing the grunt work are heading to the surface just as our interns and entry-level angels are! If our misguided angels were to attempt to reach out Down Below, they would find no welcome there.”

“From the Dark Council, maybe,” Gabriel said. “But you said yourself. The grunt demons are doing the same thing our angels are. What if they got together?”

“We could end up with a lot more spawn,” Sandalphon whispered, horrified.

“Now you’re getting ahead of yourself.” Michael rolled her eyes. “We still don’t know how the traitor and the demon ended up with the first one.”

“And do we want to find out the hard way?” Sandalphon asked.

“Spawn or no spawn, do we really want to risk the little rebellion started by the traitor and the demon spreading? _Especially_ since the demons all already know that betraying the cause of Hell makes one immune to Holy Water?” Gabriel pointed out.

“And if the angels find out about … well … the Hellfire …” Sandalphon was looking a bit green about the gills.

Michael leaned back, pinched the bridge of her nose, and took a deep breath. “Let’s say, solely for the sake of argument, that I were to agree with your premise that another rebellion were in the offing. Right now, what we’re fighting against is rumor and ignorance. Precisely how would you suggest we go about defeating such an enemy?”

“The same way I’d suggest defeating any contagion. Find the source and eliminate it,” Gabriel replied.

Uriel sucked in a harsh breath. “Gabriel.”

“If the spawn no longer exists, the focal point disappears. The angels and the demons have no choice but to resume the status quo, while management can work on finding a new balance,” Gabriel said. “More importantly, do you have a better idea?”

Michael didn’t answer that. Instead, her eyes slowly swept around the table. And fell on Samael.

“Samael.”

Samael did not jump, but only because she was far too much of a warrior to be caught sleeping at her post.

“You’ve been very quiet. What are your thoughts?”

“Michael—” Gabriel growled, but Michael held up her hand, and he instantly went silent … though not without grinding his teeth.

Samael didn’t say anything. Not at first. She took a long breath (really, she was grateful to have a corporation again to give her an excuse to do that) and spread her hands flat out on the table.

Then she looked Michael in the eye.

“How does one go about killing a half-angel, half-demon, whose parents seem to be immune to Hellfire and Holy Water?”

“Firmament,” Sandalphon answered. “I mean, really, Samael, you ought to know that. Seeing as you saw firmament put a hole through the demon.”

“That didn’t last,” Samael pointed out. “If either of our sources of intelligence is correct, the demon’s fine now.”

“Samael,” Gabriel said with a slow smile that attempted to be chummy and … wasn’t. Just wasn’t. When had _that_ changed? “Surely we don’t need to tell you that’s simply a question of aim.”

Samael didn’t respond. She turned back to Michael. “Putting aside the _how_ , we have to admit that the Great Plan is in shambles and we still don’t know what’s coming next. We just got Heaven off war footing. Acting unilaterally might upset whatever working balance we have, and the traitor’s child isn’t important enough to risk that. Whatever we do … I can’t believe I’m saying this, but whatever we do, we need to do it in concert with Hell.”

A month ago, such a statement, coming from her no less, would have resulted in gasps and pandemonium. Now, Michael nodded, as did Uriel. Even Sandalphon and Gabriel didn’t object.[3]

It had truly been one hell of a month.

“Then I think that settles the question of action for now,” Michael said. “We don’t know enough to act in a way that’s wise, and …” She glanced sidelong at the Metatron. “We still ought to give the Almighty more time to respond to our inquiries. Right, I believe that settles that—”

“So we’re going to do nothing, then?” Gabriel demanded.

Michael turned to him slowly, one eyebrow deliberately arching up and then just as deliberately arching back down again. “I did not say we would do nothing.”

“Sounds like it to me,” Sandalphon grumbled.

“Don’t be obtuse,” Michael snapped. “There’s plenty we can still do. Speak more with Hell, send out scouts to get a location on the traitors and their child—”

“ _Scouts_? You mean deliberately doing the _one thing_ we told our angels _not_ to do?” Gabriel shouted.

Michael rolled her eyes. “Well, even if killing the traitors’ child wasn’t an incredibly stupid idea, how, Gabriel, tell me _how_ you would plan to do it if _you don’t know where she is_?”

“Not! By! Rewarding! Fucking! _Insubordination_!” Gabriel shouted back, punctuating every word with a pound on the table.

“Gabriel,” and now Michael’s voice was low, deadly, a timbre Samael hadn’t heard for a _very_ long time, “if you take that tone with me one more time, I swear to our Creator—”

“You swear _what_? This is personnel management; you put _me_ in charge of personnel—”

“Was that a mistake, I—”

“STOP!”

Michael stopped. Gabriel stopped. Sandalphon and Samael, who hadn’t been doing anything, stopped. Even the Metatron stopped.[4]

All stopped, and all turned to look at Uriel.

She was cradling her head in her hands and taking deep breaths. Slowly, she looked up. “Listen to yourselves,” she whispered. “Just listen. The last time I heard this type of argument around the archangels’ table …” She couldn’t finish, just put her hand over her mouth, got up and all-but-ran off.

“Uriel—” Michael started, then, when Uriel was gone, glared at Gabriel. “ _Now_ you’ve done it.”

“Now _I’ve_ done it? You were the one—”

“This discussion is over,” Michael snapped, and without a further word, got up and hurried away. “Uriel! Uriel, _wait_!”

The rest of them sat there, dead silent, still as the sky after the lightning, waiting for the thunder.

The first to move was the Metatron. “I …” He shook his head blearily. “I must go report the—the minutes of the meeting to the Almighty. Yes. Of course. She will want to know …”

What She’d want to know was left unsaid, or at least unintelligible, as the Metatron walked away, muttering below his breath.

Samael took a deep breath, shook her head, and prepared to follow him.

“Samael. Wait,” Gabriel ordered.

Samael stopped. She raised an eyebrow.

“Please,” Gabriel added, flushing a little as he stared at the table. He made a great show of straightening his papers as Samael leaned back in her chair and gestured for him to go on.

Then he looked up. His eyes were the violet of the lightning flash that splits the sky. “You said we shouldn’t move without Hell.”

“And I stand by that,” Samael said.

“If I were to tell you that Michael isn’t the only one with a channel into Hell …” Gabriel raised an eyebrow, the question quite loud for all that it was unspoken.

Samael tapped her fingers against the glass-top table. “Having Hell join the hunting party does us no good if we can’t find the quarry.”

“We can find the quarry,” Sandalphon said. “Hell’s got ideas.”

A chill snaked down its way down Samael’s spine. It was only millennia upon millennia of battlefield training that kept it from showing on her face.

“So,” Gabriel asked, “can we count on your sword, Samael?”

Her corporation’s stomach clenched. But there was only one way she could answer, wasn’t there?

“Gabriel,” Samael leaned forward, “we have known each other since before time began. Tell me. When have you ever _not_ been able to count on my sword against the enemies of Heaven?”

Gabriel grinned. So did Sandalphon. Samael did not.

“Good,” Gabriel said. “Keep an eye on your phone. We’ll be in touch.”

* * *

“I don’t understand,” Hera said, looking over Hermes’s shoulder at the laptop screen. “What, exactly, am I looking at?”

He sighed and rolled his eyes quite theatrically. Hera ignored both. The easiest way to deal with Hermes’s lack of patience and fits of pique was to pretend that neither existed.

“These are the analytics of all the articles, videos, etc. that have been published about the miracles we’ve been doing. Everything from page views to social mentions to bounce rates, with some segmentation and even predictive analysis thrown in—”

“I understand what those words mean individually,” Hera interrupted, “but not together. Can you explain what you mean in layman’s terms?”

Now it was Athena’s turn to sigh. “He’s showing us how many people are looking at the articles and the videos of the miracles we’ve been doing, along with more information about how often people are talking about these articles on social media and how long they stay on the page once they get to it. And he has some insights about what sorts of mortals are looking at the pages and ideas for getting certain people to give the articles another look.”

“All right,” Hera said, nodding slowly. “What I am seeing is a screen full of graphs.”

“That is generally how data is presented, yes,” said Hermes.

Hera should not have glared at him. She did anyway. “I know enough about graphs to know how easily they can be manipulated,” she continued. “So, I repeat myself: what am I looking at?”

Hermes’s shoulders slumped. “In as few, small words as possible? Bad news.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific. What kind of bad news?”

Hermes gestured to the laptop screen, for once at a loss for words – and if that wasn’t terrifying on an existential level, very few things would be. “Page views are pretty terrible to start with—”

“Not enough mortals are going to the sites and looking at the articles and videos,” Athena translated.

“Bounce rates are through the roof—”

“The ones who are coming are generally not staying long enough to read the entire article or watch the video.”

“Social mentions are, eh, negligible at best—”

“Mortals also aren’t talking about the articles on Facebook and Twitter and the rest.”

“And no matter how I segment the audience, the picture doesn’t change.”

“Hermes is looking at multiple demographics and can’t find any one that’s performing the way we want it to.”

“So basically,” Hermes concluded, “what we want is for this stuff to go viral, but it appears that the mortals have been vaccinated.”

“We’re hoping—”

“That metaphor I understood,” Hera interrupted.

And that was all she said, for the moment. She had too much to think about to speak. So she drew her glasses down to better stare at the screen over them, tapped the fingers of her free hand against her elbow, and thought. But for the faint whirr of the laptop fan and the incessant clicking of Hermes’s pen, the room fell silent as she did so.

When she spoke next, it was measured, thoughtful. “So what you are saying, overall, is that the response to our miracles has been … disappointing.”

“Yes,” Hermes replied slowly in his clearly-you-are-an-idiot voice.

Hera glared at him over her glasses and raised one eyebrow. Hermes replied with an excrement-eating grin.

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “By what measure have our results been disappointing?” she asked.

“I told you, we want this stuff to go viral—”

“Yes, yes, I understand that; however,” Hera held up a hand, “Rome was not built in a day. The Abrahamics did not go from inconsequential desert gods to world-bestriding colossi overnight. I am not expecting our old temples to be full tomorrow. This a marathon, not a sprint.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Hermes replied. “Which is why I prepared this as well.”

He waved his hand toward the second screen on the desk. It flickered to life and showed an image quite like the first screen. Or at least, it was similar insofar as the configuration of bar graphs, line graphs, etc. went. But on the second screen, all the bars and lines were higher.

Much, much higher.

“ _These_ are the numbers the Abrahamics were pulling with their little stunts like the kraken attacks, pulling Atlantis out of the sea, re-growing Amazon rainforests, alien invasions, setting the M25 on fire, etc., etc., at about the same point in time relative to when they started pulling all that stuff that we are now,” Hermes explained. “I think the graphs speak for themselves – and before you point out that graphs can be manipulated, I _didn’t_ , or, well, yeah, I did, but only so we could have an apples-to-apples comparison.” And then he laughed. “Ha. Apples.”

Hera didn’t ask what about that was funny; the fruit was overlaid with so much symbolism that it could have been anything. Instead, she looked at the second screen, then the first, then the second again.

“How do those numbers play out over time?” Hera asked. “Is the viewership still growing, or did level off, or—”

“Oh, the numbers fell off a cliff as soon as the Antichrist kid pulled the plug on the Apocalypse,” Hermes said. “It didn’t hurt that all the damage he’d done got fixed overnight. Well, most of it. And I think he might have done a mortal memory reset or something. Reboot from a restore point. The only reason the articles even survived is because, well, it’s the internet, nothing is ever deleted from the internet.”

Hera nodded, slowly. “So what you’re telling me is that we have time.”

Athena sighed. “Hera—”

“I believe I already said that this is not a sprint. We have more miracles to work. We have more articles to run. And most importantly, we have plenty of time to get those numbers up.”

Hera very deliberately took her glasses off, let them dangle loosely from her fingers, and raised an eyebrow at Hermes. The question – _and what is your plan to do that?_ – was clear.

Hermes ran a hand through his hair. “Look, I’m not going to pretend that we don’t have options, but, uh, none of them are what you might call ethical, and they involve a lot more mortal involvement than you’re going to want. Also, money.”

“You’re the god of commerce. I’m sure money is not an issue for you,” Hera said lightly.

Athena was not willing to let it go that easily. “Why do you need money?”

“To pay the mortals.”

Hera raised an eyebrow. “Pay the mortals for what?”

“Because they’re the ones who have the skills to do what we want. Make this stuff go viral even when it doesn’t want to. And look, whether you’re luring Russian psyops away from the Kremlin or hiring Macedonian fake news gurus, you need serious cash to make it worth their while—”

“Wait. Wait. Your solution to the problem of mortals ignoring – or theoretically ignoring – our miracles is to _hire other mortals_ to get their attention?” Hera asked.

“Yep.”

“ _Why_? Can’t you just …” Hera waved her hand at the computer and raised an eyebrow.

Hermes threw his head back and laughed. Actually laughed. “What, just snap my whole fingers and get the entire internet’s attention? Are you crazy?”

“Well, why not?” Hera asked. She was pouting. Actually pouting. “You’re a god of communication, why can’t you—”

“It’s the _internet_ , Hera! It’s the entire mortal hive mind! I can’t control it. Nobody can control it! For me to be able to do that – even if I teamed up with Hephaestus and every other god who’s even remotely connected to communication and messengers and tech of any kind – it’d be like _you_ being able to snap your fingers and make every marriage on the planet happy and healthy.”

Hera took a deep, shaking breath. Hermes had to know the depth of that insult; he was many things, but a fool was not one of them—

But whether he knew or not, he didn’t seem to care. He sighed and spun his chair so he faced the screen. “Face it, Hera. It’s the mortals’ world now. We’re just living in it.”

Hera was glad he was looking away from her. It meant he wasn’t able to see her flinch.

Then she took a deep breath, straightened her jacket and her skirt, and forced her attention back on the task at hand. “You’re certain you’re going to need Russian psyops and Macedonian fake news sites to get the mortals’ attention?”

Athena made a faint choking nose, which Hera ignored.

Hermes turned back to her, blinking slowly and eyebrows practically marching into his hair. “I mean, it’s probably the fastest way to get from A to B, but if you want to try to let organic traffic grow naturally, throw a few more miracles into the mix first and see where that gets us …”

“I believe one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” Hera replied. “I’m not going to have all of our forces – and all of the forces of the other pantheons – flooding the airwaves with miracles, so to speak, if the mortals aren’t even watching. We need to keep our powder dry for the bigger battles to come. So, Hermes, I would like a complete proposal for this strategy on my desk and your father’s by morning. Is that doable?”

Hermes groaned and rolled his eyes. “Since I don’t need to eat or sleep? Yeah, it’s doable. I am _definitely_ buying more stock in Death Wish Coffee, though.”

“I thought you said they weren’t public,” Athena murmured.

“ _Details_ ,” Hermes said, waving a hand dismissively. “Anyway, you done, Hera? Because I need to get to work on that proposal if you want something on your desk by tomorrow.”

“Yes, yes, I’m through. Thank you,” Hera said. Then, with no more delay, she frowned and left Hermes’s office, intent on going back to her own space to – to _what_ , exactly? Fret? Convince herself not to fret? Talk to Zeus—no, she couldn’t do _that_ , not until she had a solution—

“Hera.”

Of course her stepdaughter would be hot on her heels. “Athena,” Hera said slowly, coming to a stop, “If you say one word of ‘I told you so,’ I swear by the—”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” Athena interrupted. “I didn’t foresee this, either.”

Some fraction of the tension wound its way out of Hera’s shoulders. She snorted. “Should I be including Apollo in our planning sessions, then?”

“If you think it will help.” And that—that was Athena. So bland and to the point it was impossible to know whether she was being serious or just doing sarcasm very, very well.

Hera took a deep breath and looked over her shoulder. “Well then. As I said earlier – this is a marathon. Not a sprint.”

“You did say that earlier. Twice,” Athena replied. By Athena’s faint frown, Hera guessed that it was growing less convincing with every repetition.

“Then what do you think of this matter, dear?” Hera asked.

Athena looked up. For a moment, she looked startlingly young and almost sad. But before Hera could blink, Athena’s typical stoic mask clamped down over her face, and she shrugged.

“I think that Hermes is right and that this is the mortals’ world now, like it or not.”

“And we’re just living in it,” Hera murmured. She looked away, toward the window. They weren’t high enough to have much of a view, but this was London. Even if Hera could only see the windows of the building across the street, she knew that nearly nine million mortal hearts were beating nearby. Millions upon millions of mortals going about their business in this city like teeming ants, unaware that literal gods walked among them … because once the mortals had withdrawn their belief, where else did the gods have to go?

Hera closed her eyes. And took a deep breath.

“Well, so be it,” she said. “Let them have the world. All we need is their faith.”

And somehow – by hook, by crook, or by dodgy Macedonian fake news sites, she would have their faith again.

* * *

The note dropped in Mephistopheles’s inbox was straightforward. _Meting on fifth flore 12 tomorrow. Bee their oar ELLS!_ Hastur’s work, of course. He knew that Hastur’s ability to understand the changing mortal world had dwindled to nothing long before humans had invented standardized spelling, but sometimes he really wondered if Hastur was doing this on purpose.

Not that it mattered. When Hastur told you to be someplace or else, you got yourself to that place no matter how he spelled it.

Thus Mephistopheles found himself once again heading to the fifth-floor conference room. He was a few minutes early and thought nothing of pushing open the door to the conference room—

And found himself face-to-face with not one, not two, but _three_ archangels. And it didn’t matter that one of them was Samael, looking not nearly as surprised to see him as he was to see her.

“S-s-sorry,” Mephistopheles stammered, “wrong room!” and tried to beat a quick retreat.

He didn’t get that far. “Ah, Mephistopheles.” That was Gabriel, hands folded before him and a stupidly jovial, yes-I’m-the-boss-but-I-can-be-your-best-friend-too, aren’t-we-a-family-here? grin on his face. “No, you’re not in the wrong room. Have a seat, young man.”

Mephistopheles nearly stared at him; he and Gabriel were the same age or close enough.

“Relax, Metabolic,” Samael said. “We’re not here to dump Holy Water on you. And your … compatriots should be here soon.”

Samael wouldn’t lie about that. Or if she did, it would only be so she would still have the element of surprise when she foiled the other archangels’ plot. Mephistopheles sat, purposely picking a chair as far away as possible from the archangels.

Speaking of which, the one who hadn’t spoken yet – Sandalphon, Mephistopheles certainly knew _him_ by sight – was giggling. And Gabriel had raised an eyebrow at Samael. “Are you doing that on purpose?”

“Doing what on purpose?”

“Getting his name wrong. Every time you say his name, it’s wrong.”

“No, I’m not. I say it right – don’t I, Mendicant?”

Sandalphon giggled harder. Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.

“It’s fine,” Mephistopheles said. “I don’t mind.” A statement that was true, but that the other angels at the table would never believe – or if they did believe it, it would be because they assumed that the only reason Mephistopheles was fine with it was because not getting into a snit would spoil Samael’s fun.

Gabriel’s narrowed eyes showed him to be traveling on just that train of thought, but before it could come into the station, the door flew open and Legion spilled inside, followed by Hastur.

“We were _coming_!” Legion whined as they stumbled into the table.

“Not fast enough,” Hastur grumbled. “At least Mephistopheles knows how to show up to a bloody meeting on time. Now _sit_.”

Legion sat. So did Hastur, but not before taking a file folder out of his long trench coat and tossing it down the table. “The intel you wanted. Seems that the spawn’s name is Ariadne, and she’s been fucking the wine god since we started keeping tabs on him.”

Gabriel and Sandalphon eagerly leaned forward and opened the file folder. Samael flinched before doing the same.

And Mephistopheles?

Mephistopheles froze.

_Oh FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!!!_

Satan must have told the other lower-downs what he’d found. Given them the whole briefing. So now all of Hell knew what he’d managed to find out about Ariadne, and if Satan was sending Hastur up here to meet with archangels over the matter, then this was—

“Not as much as I wanted to find out,” Hastur went on, “given that _somebody_ cleared out the wine god’s files,” he glared at Mephistopheles, “but there was a bit on her in the general Olympian files. Nothing about strengths or weaknesses, though, more’s the pity.”

_Wait, he had to go hunting for information on her in the Cabinets? Satan didn’t tell him? But then why—_

_Oh._

_Oh, no._

This wasn’t as bad as Mephistopheles had feared.

It was _worse_.

_FUUUUUUCK!_

“She seems to spend most of her time hiding behind the wine god’s toga,” Gabriel said. “That could make eliminating her … difficult.”

“Not if we separate her from the wine god,” Sandalphon replied.

“And how exactly do you intend to do that?” Samael asked. Mephistopheles didn’t pray, but he sent out a fervent wish to the universe that Gabriel and Sandalphon would interpret that as Samael’s usual tetchiness, and not anything … else.

“Something will come up,” Sandalphon shrugged. “They can’t be together all the time.”

“And in order to catch her at just the right moment, you’d need to have constant surveillance on her. Which will be difficult, seeing as we don’t know where she is,” Samael replied with the frustration of one making a very good point for at least the sixth time.

“Oh ye of little faith,” Gabriel said, smirking. “Hastur’s already figured that out.”

Samael’s eyes narrowed, and she turned her glare to Hastur.

Now it was Hastur’s turn to chuckle and smile. “Legion, tell us about the horseless carriage she used to discorporate you.”

Mephistopheles winced, but apparently Hastur had picked the right buttons to press to get Legion to forget themselves and start talking. “First, it’s not a _horseless carriage_ , it’s a _car_ , and it’s not just _any_ car, it’s a vintage Bentley that the demon Crowley must have had custom-made back before the Nazi war. Do you have any idea how rare those are? Most humans would give their right arm for a car like that! Or someone’s right arm. And—”

“Enough!” Hastur snapped, loudly enough that Mephistopheles jumped, and he wasn’t the only one. “Don’t go on about bloody right arms, you— _anyway_.” Hastur shook his head, a full-body shudder seizing over him before he turned back to the archangels. “Car’s pretty distinctive, all right?”

“Your Disgrace,” Samael said, and oh, if she was being _that_ icily polite, she had to be annoyed, “that’s lovely, but you’re assuming that anyone there’s anyone around this table who can tell a vintage bent-tree from a hole in the ground – Legion excepted.”

“Pffft. We don’t need to be able to _see_ the bloody thing or know what we’re looking at. Infernal Communications has had a lock on it ever since the snake went and got himself that thing. We can’t trace it _now_ , but we think that’s just Antichrist interference. Once it starts to move …”

Samael blinked twice, slowly, while Gabriel’s eyes lit up. “So you’re saying that you can trace the vehicle – and when we find the vehicle, we’ll find the spawn?”

“There’s no guarantee that the spawn will be with the vehicle,” Samael pointed out.

“If she isn’t, then we come up with a different plan,” Gabriel dismissed. Then he raised an eyebrow at Samael. “I thought you were with us.”

“I am. I’ve also been discorporated once by this spawn and would prefer not to repeat the experience. Which means I’d like us to have a plan that’s not held together by – how do humans put it? Duck tape and spit?”

“Duck tape? Like tape that quacks?” Sandalphon asked.

Samael shrugged.

“Plans? We’re talking about _plans_?” Hastur grumbled. “Spent six thousand years following the Great Plan, now, didn’t we, only for some angel who can barely find his arse with both hands to come along and ask, ‘Er, that Great Plan, is it the same thing as the Ineffable Plan?’ and the next thing you know, everyone’s bloody plans have gone to Hell in a handbasket and Armageddon is off. And now you want to bring up a plan?”

Samael watched Hastur levelly throughout that speech, raised an eyebrow, and said slowly, “Your point?”

“Plans are overrated is my point.”

Samael’s eyeroll was long, theatrical, and utterly wasted, since Gabriel was speaking before she could even finish it. “What Hastur is trying to say is that we need to improvise. Think on our feet. For now, we use the car to track the spawn, because that’s the only lead we have. If it works, great. If it doesn’t – we come up with something else.”

“She can’t hide forever,” Hastur said. “And when she bolts from her hidey-hole …”

He grinned. Mephistopheles tried not to shudder.

“That’s when we get her,” Hastur said. “Sooner or later.”

Samael’s face went stony. Then, slowly, she sighed.

“If this is the bloody stupid plan you’ve got,” she said, reaching into the inner pocket of her jacket, “then I suppose I ought to give you lot these.”

She took her hand out of her pocket and revealed—

Mephistopheles’s jaw dropped.

It fell farther when Samael put what she’d taken out of her pocket on the table and slid them down.

And his corporation’s heart skipped a beat when one spun to a halt in front of him.

It _couldn’t_ be.

“What’s all this?” Hastur asked, picking his up and glancing askance at it.

Mephistopheles didn’t have it in him to speak. Luckily Legion did. “A _cel-phone_?” they whispered reverentially, cradling the phone in their hand like it was a child.

“A what?” Hastur asked.

“Latest in angelic communication,” Samael said. “If we’re going to be going with a no-plan plan, we need to be able to talk to each other. And we’re not using those pagers I saw the last time we were all on the surface together.”

“So it’s like a … a phone that the humans use to talk to each other? Only for angels?” Hastur asked.

“And demons, now,” Samael replied. “Plus, I made sure they were all on the archangel protocol, so there’s no trace or record of your communications stored outside the phone itself. Of course, if you communicate with any angel not on the archangel protocol, the records will be stored on their phone and any traces their phones are linked to, but …” Samael smirked. “Since my contact and your contacts are the only ones programmed into the phone, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Archangel protocol,” Gabriel whispered. “That’s brilliant.”

“Wait,” Sandalphon asked, “why aren’t our contacts in the phones?”

Mephistopheles’s stomach plunged; that had to be the weak spot in the plan Samael had cobbled together to keep this from getting out of hand … but the way Samael groaned and rolled her eyes put paid to that notion. “Sandalphon, what exactly would you have done to me if you found out I’d put your contact into a demon’s phone without your permission?”

Sandalphon blinked, then laughed.

“But you have our permission now,” Gabriel said. He snapped his fingers.

The phone in Mephistopheles’s hand buzzed. _New contact added – Archangel Gabriel._ Similar buzzes came from Hastur’s and Legion’s phones. And then there was another round of buzzing as Sandalphon snapped his fingers.

With that done, there wasn’t much left to say. Hastur promised to be in touch the second they were able to track the demon Crowley’s car, and Mephistopheles volunteered to be the first to take a stint in the human world “just in case,” to keep an eye on things.

He had a reason for that, and the reason was that there was no such thing as privacy in Hell. And he badly needed to talk to Samael where no one else could see or hear him. Luckily, she’d given him a cel-phone.

So while Hastur, Legion, and Mephistopheles all piled into the elevator together, Mephistopheles got off at the ground floor and quickly passed into London. He turned up his collar and walked to the nearest coffee shop, throwing every bit of demonic glamour up that he could.

Once inside, he snagged a table, took out the cel-phone with trembling hands, and found Samael’s contact. He put the phone up to his ear and waited.

Samael answered on the first ring. “Well, this is a fuck-up for the ages.”

Mephistopheles let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “So you don’t want her dead, either?”

“’Course not. She’s the first …” Samael ended the sentence with a wordless noise of frustration. “And so much for throwing a spanner in the works.”

“We can still do that,” Mephistopheles said, but without holding out much hope. They’d tried that at first, and look how far it had gotten them.

“We can,” Samael agreed, both with the statement and Mephistopheles’s lack of hope. “I mean, it’s not the worst plan. It’s just …”

“Not likely to work.”

“I wasn’t going to _say_ that.”

“But it’s true, isn’t it?” Mephistopheles ran a hand through his hair and leaned on his elbow. “It’s like when the lower-downs have a bee in their bonnet, and you know what _that_ means – whatever they want has to get done, by hook or by crook, or else you’re never going to hear the end of it.”

Samael said nothing. And Mephistopheles realized that maybe she really didn’t know what that meant. She’d never had multiple bosses breathing down her neck, all demanding that she do _this thing_ and do it _now_ or else there would be literal Hell to pay. And the only way to escape was to do the thing, or if you couldn’t do the thing, make them bloody well think you’d done the thing. Which could work, if you were lucky; if half the things that had been said at his trial were true, the demon Crowley had been pulling that con for centuries if not millennia—

And Mephistopheles gasped.

“Mephistopheles?”

It couldn’t be that simple, could it?

“Oi, Mephistopheles! You there?”

It would be difficult to pull off. And it might only kick the can down the road. But it would buy them time, and time was something they could all use more of—

“ _Mephistopheles_! Are you still there? Are you all right? Do I need to come down there?”

“Wh—what?” Mephistopheles asked, thrown out of his reverie. “I—oh! Oh, I’m fine. I just—I think I know how we can get out of this. And get _her_ out of this, too.”

There was a moment of silence. And

then a chuckle. “Well, well. Then say on, my friend.”

Mephistopheles smiled, and did so.

* * *

[1] The traitor was a statistical outlier, and thus Samael was not counting him.

[2] He couldn’t help it. Metatron had been human once, and unlike the vast majority of humans who were promoted to angelic rank, he’d been allowed to keep his memories and his sense of what it was to be human. Dozing was apparently part of the package.

[3] The Metatron didn’t say anything, but he may have been halfway to dreamland.

[4] Dozing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
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> 
> The next update should be up on Tuesday!


	17. Somebody Better Put You Back into Your Place

“You want,” Zeus said slowly, “to _what_?”

That was not the tone Hera wanted to hear. And the look on Zeus’s face – eyes narrowed, brow furrowed, frown deep-set – was not the one she wanted to see.

They were all sitting in Zeus’s plush office. Well, Zeus, Hermes, and Athena were sitting. Hera could have seated herself, had she a mind to; there was a second tall, throne-like desk chair that was only in the room so she could sit next to Zeus when the occasion called for it. But today, she was standing on the same side of the desk and slightly behind Zeus. A visual, should he need one, of the power behind the throne and the age-old aphorism, _behind every great man, there is a great woman_.[1]

“Dear,” she said, laying a hand on his shoulder. Adding a stroke with the thumb as well. Sometimes touch could get through to him in a way mere words wouldn’t. “I think we should hear out the rest of Hermes’s proposal before we come to any snap judgments.”

“And you know what’s in this proposal?” Zeus asked, craning his neck to scowl up at her. “No, wait, let me guess – you told Hermes what to put in the proposal.”

Hera rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is Hermes’s game; I don’t understand half of his internet—”

“Oh, I’m sure you had Hermes fill in the details,” Zeus interrupted. “You aren’t one to care much about the details, not when there are mortals to manipulate. And I don’t care much about them either, come to think about it. What I care about …”

He turned away from Hera, stared down Hermes and Athena instead. “What were you _thinking_?”

“You’re acting like we’ve given away the keys to the kingdom. We haven’t even done anything yet,” Hermes replied.

“All the more reason to find out what you were thinking now,” Zeus said. “Before you cause the damage.”

Hermes sighed. While he did not look sleep-deprived, per se, his hair was even more a riotous mess than usual, his clothes were rumpled, and he held his travel mug in a death grip. “All right, maybe it’s a little shady, but this isn’t, like, murdering babies levels of unethical. We’re having trouble getting the kind of web traffic we need to make sure we’re getting the word-of-mouth we need to, you know, eventually get the belief we need. So all I’m saying we should do is hire some experts—”

“You want to hire mortals,” Zeus interrupted, “to get other mortals to believe in us.”

“It’s the quickest route from A to B.” Hermes took a defensive sip of his coffee. “And it’s not like the priests and priestesses at the temples weren’t paid. And some branches of the Abrahamics turn poverty into a virtue, and still _their_ priests get paid—”

“There is a world of difference between mortals paying other mortals to intercede between them and the gods,” Zeus interrupted, “and us bribing a pack of mortals to get us believers. And if you don’t see that …”

He turned his glare to Athena, who flinched under it.

“Zeus,” Hera warned.

Zeus kept glaring at Athena, at least until Hermes started speaking again. “Look, what about this bothers you so much? The money? I mean, yeah, the experts might be expensive, but if we go for the Macedonian fake-news guys, we can give them all the ad revenue that the sites will raise and that should cut our costs, because let’s face it, it’s not like we _need_ the money when we can just magic a little bit more into our bank accounts—”

“It’s not about the money,” Athena admitted, a sharp blush staining her cheeks. She stared at the hands she’d fisted in her lap. “What—what Father is trying to say that it’s about the principle of the thing.”

“Ah, yes, of course, the principle of the thing. Because that’s what the Abrahamics are about. Principles,” Hermes deadpanned. “Do you _honestly_ think they didn’t cheat when they knocked us off our pedestals? Like, a lot?”

“Of course they did,” Zeus scoffed. “But not like this. This isn’t giving a few mortals access to power beyond their understanding and using them to convert others. It was still mortals using divine power. This? This is the divine admitting that it no longer can command mortals’ attention and using mortal power to access other mortals.”

He looked up, eyes locking with Hera’s. “And if you cannot see that, then there really is no hope for us.”

“Pater—” Hermes started.

Zeus glared at Hermes. Hermes snapped his mouth shut.

Zeus steepled his fingers and tapped them to his lips. Hermes squirmed under the scrutiny. Athena wouldn’t even look up, staring instead at her hands folded on her lap.

“Do you even want to do this?” Zeus asked. “Or are you just tossing ideas at the wall, hoping something will stick long enough to get your stepmother off your back?”

The question was clearly directed to Hermes; now the squirming was even more pronounced. “Look,” he finally sighed, “some of us have lives, ok?”

“I thought so. Out,” Zeus said. He glanced at Athena. “You too.”

Athena looked up, her blush deepening. “Father—”

“ _Out_.”

They did not need to be told a third time. Hermes was out the door first, pausing only to make sure he still had his coffee. Athena followed slowly behind him, arms crossed over her chest and eyes trained on the ground.

Once the door had closed behind her, then and only then did Zeus turn back to Hera. “Sit.” He gestured to the just-vacated chairs on the opposite side of the desk.

Hera narrowed her eyes. She snapped her fingers, and the second throne-like chair silently scooted to the same side of the desk as Zeus.

Then, and only then, did she sit.

“Well?”

“Have you lost your mind?”

Hera’s nostrils flared. “We need believers. We cannot hope to get converts if we can’t even get the mortals’ attention. Is this really any different than a Chi Rho appearing in the sky on the eve of battle?”

What she thought, but did not say, was, _They even stole our alphabet, Zeus. Our tongue. They couldn’t use their own letters to make their case. What is our borrowing the technological expertise of a few mortals compared to that?_

“The Abrahamics didn’t convert the Roman Empire because of a vision. They converted the Roman Empire because they made sure Constantine won the battle.”

“Yet if he hadn’t been paying attention …”

“We’re not bribing mortals to do our work for us,” Zeus replied. “We do that, and we’ve already admitted defeat. No. We need …”

Zeus looked away from her, tapping his fingers on the desk before him. “We need to do this the old-fashioned way.”

Hera’s nostrils flared. “There are few things more old-fashioned than miracles. It’s only recently that mortals began insisting on finding a logical explanation for everything.”

“Mmm. More old-fashioned than that.” Zeus glanced sidelong at her. “The Abrahamics were just one more desert sect among dozens before their Almighty sent a demigod to earth.”

Hera froze.

It was as if time itself had stopped. Zeus moved not a muscle; neither did she. All she could hear was the pounding of her heart, just barely louder than the siren screeching in her mind.

She forced herself to breathe in. Slow, shaky. It rang through the room like a bell. “You wouldn’t _dare_ ,” she breathed out.

Zeus held her gaze, unflinching. “It worked for the Abrahamics.”

“Zeus. No. Their Almighty – They can’t even decide on a gender, They certainly don’t have a _wife_ —”

“And a lot of good my wife is doing for me and my cause right now.”

“ _Zeus_!” Hera couldn’t help it; the sound tore from her throat like the cry of a wounded animal. “You promised. You promised you’d be faithful.”

“Then what do you suggest instead?” Zeus snapped. “That isn’t hiring mortals to trick other mortals into believing in us? Believe me, I’m all ears.”

Hera’s mouth was dry, her mind full of cotton. She didn’t have time for this, she had to _think_. But all that ran through her mind was demigods and nymphs and Titans and mortal women and Zeus’s broken promises; he could never keep a promise to her, could he? He’d promise his mortal brides the sun and the moon, would try to keep _those_ promises even if saying no would be for the mortals’ own good, but her—

Hera gasped.

Zeus raised an eyebrow at her.

She had it. She actually had it. The answer to her conundrum – and if that failed, certainly an answer to Zeus’s.

“ _Dionysus_.”

* * *

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when a group of immortals from varying pantheons gets together in a situation that is not out-and-out conflict, sooner or later, war stories will be traded. When at least two of the immortals occupy moral alignments far closer to “chaotic” than “lawful,” this goes double.

The character of the trade, and the stories, varies. Sometimes the trade is a subtle or not-so-subtle game of one-upmanship. Sometimes it is the exchange of vital intelligence necessary to the task at hand. And sometimes …

Well, sometimes, it’s just shooting the shit.

Which was the situation Dionysus found himself in, hovering at the edge of the living room in Jasmine Cottage. They were all together – Anathema and Newt, Crowley and Aziraphale, Ariadne, Eris, and him. The false trails had been laid; Crowley was out of the sling. They were only waiting for Persephone to say when their transport would be ready, and then they would return to London.

In the meantime … there were stories.

“All right, so,” Eris said, leaning forward. She was grinning like a maniac, which was to say, like Eris. “You got a bunch of rats to infest the tower.”

“I did. He helped,” Crowley replied, nodding at Aziraphale.

Aziraphale gaped. “I did not!”

“Sure you did. You kept feeding the rats in the alley outside the bookshop. Got them used to angelic/demonic presences.”

“I …” Several expressions made their way across Aziraphale’s face in rapid succession: denial, disbelief, and finally, dawning comprehension. “Oh, good Lord.”

“That’s debatable. _Anyway_ ,” Crowley leaned forward, elbows on knees, massive grin lighting up his face. “So once the tower is well and truly infested, I show up, claiming to be from Rataway Pest Control, saying I’m here to inspect the rat problem.”

“Question,” Ariadne interrupted. “Was Rataway Pest Control even real?”

Crowley just grinned.

“That’s a phishing scam for the ages,” Newt said. “What?” he asked when Anathema raised an eyebrow at him. “Just because I can’t touch a computer without it exploding doesn’t mean that I don’t understand how many ways they can go wrong.”

“And oh, can they go wrong,” Crowley laughed. “Naturally, security lets me right in.”

“Naturally,” Eris agreed. “Because who wouldn’t, when the alternative is that ‘the floor is lava,’ except the lava is rats?”

Crowley grinned and nodded. “So I head up to the top of the tower, right where all the expensive equipment that keeps London’s mobile network up and running is. Security guard leaves me alone as soon as she can, maybe – just maybe – because of the rats.”

Eris clapped her hands and leaned forward.

“Once I get there, I have to give the rats a pep talk, thank them for their service, as one does.” Now Crowley leaned back with an expansive wave. “Can’t very well not thank the rats. And once I’m done with that and the rats are on their way out, I open up the central console …”

He paused. Everyone in the room – even Dionysus, jaded as he was; even Aziraphale, who looked as if he knew he ought to be disapproving – leaned toward Crowley.

“And I pour my tea into it.”

Silence. Dead silence.

And then, cacophony.

“That’s it? That’s _it_? That’s all you did?” Anathema demanded, while Newt let out an embarrassed guffaw.

The sound that came from Ariadne could have been a laugh, a snort, or both at once, and Aziraphale put his head in his hands and sighed, “Oh, _Crowley_.”

Eris, though.

Eris threw back her head. Waggled her arms and kicked her feet and _shrieked_ with laughter.

“ _Aaaaaaah_ that’s the BEST!” The squeal she let out left Dionysus listening for the telltale tinkle of shattering glass. “You _poured your tea on it_!”

“Knocked out all of London’s mobile networks for the better part of a day,” Crowley said with no small amount of pride. “Of course as luck would have it, that ended up coming back to bite _me_ in the arse, since that was the same day Hastur and Ligur showed up a few miles from here with the Antichrist, but hey, it was still a bad job well done, if I do say so myself.”

“You are _incorrigible,_ ” Aziraphale sighed, resting his forehead on his palm and shaking his head.

“Demon,” Crowley said. “So, Eris, your turn?”

“Not yet,” Dionysus said. Perhaps because he hadn’t spoken in some time, everyone turned to him. “I want to hear more about when you were working with British counterintelligence. During World War II.”

Aziraphale smiled fondly into his teacup. “You did a lot of good in those days,” he said, putting a hand on Crowley’s knee.

“I did no such thing. I diverted a bomber to destroy a church, if you’ll recall. Which you should; you were _there_.”

“Indeed.” Now Aziraphale gazed at Crowley with the sort of impossibly fond, heart-in-eyes look that could melt a heart of stone. Since Dionysus’s heart was not made of stone and he still needed it, he looked away.

At Ariadne. Who hadn’t looked away, but was instead watching the angel and demon with a small half-smile. At least until she felt Dionysus’s gaze on her and glanced at him.

She smiled. Fully. It was a lot like Aziraphale’s.

Dionysus’s heart did a somersault, and for a moment all thoughts of script treatments and director choices and driving home the moral that _Nazis are so fucking evil, even literal demons from Hell will drop a church on them at the first opportunity_ fled his mind. For a moment there was just him and Ariadne.

It couldn’t last. It shattered with the ringing of Dionysus’s phone.

“Ah—sorry,” he muttered as everyone in the room jumped, even Eris. He fished the phone out of his pocket, glanced at the caller ID—

And blanched.

“Sorry,” he heard himself say, making his escape on autopilot. “Need to take this. ‘Scuse me.” He stumbled from his chair and out of the living room, toward the back door. He could hear footsteps following him and ignored them.

Only when the door clicked shut behind him did he dare to answer the phone. He swallowed hard and threw every shred of acting ability he possessed into keeping his voice steady. “Father.”

“Son.”

Dionysus should say something. Some innocuous, like _How are you?_ or _What did you need?_ But the words didn’t come, and even if they had, his mouth was too dry to force them out.

A sigh came from the other end of the line. “Where are you?”

Dionysus’s mouth grew even drier, but he forced himself to swallow and answer. “Haven’t left Eng—the island,” he corrected, because he had left England, technically, what with going to Inverness.

“That is not an answer to my question.”

Dionysus took a deep breath and said nothing, even as the words _Look, I can explain_ and _It’s not my fault_ and other admissions of guilt clawed at his throat.

“Why did you leave London?”

Dionysus’s hackles rose and the words came out before he could stop them. “We were being chased. And shot at.”

Most fathers, Dionysus believed, would have asked who was doing the chasing and the shooting. He wondered what it would be like to have a father like that. “Who is ‘we’?”

“Me. Ariadne.”

“And?”

Dionysus closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Dionysus. Do not test my patience.”

The tone hit Dionysus like a lightning bolt straight to the spine; he stood up straight and swallowed hard. “The angel Aziraphale. The demon Crowley. Ar—”

He clamped down on the rest of that, hard. He couldn’t sell Ariadne’s secret out like that, not unless he had to. Hera might already know or have guessed, but that didn’t mean his father knew, and if his father didn’t know, he shouldn’t go revealing it until he could use that knowledge to save all of their skins—

“Ariadne’s parents.”

Once again, Dionysus flinched. “You knew,” he said, and the tone was not nearly as conciliatory or deferential as it ought to have been.

“Of course.”

“How long?”

“That is none of your concern.”

“How. _Long_?”

A pause. “Son.” There was only the tiniest hint of warning left in that tone. “This conversation will go much easier for you if you remember that I am the one who will be asking the questions.”

Dionysus shuddered, swallowed, and said nothing.

“And this is not a conversation we can have over the phone. I expect to see you at Olympic Holdings this evening. Seven o’clock. Alone.”

Dionysus blinked. “Father—”

“Seven o’clock,” came the reply, followed by dead air and the faint _beep, beep_ of a disconnected line.

_Well … shit._

He glanced at the clock on his phone as he headed back into the cottage.

At least he had plenty of time to get back to London. He could take the train – England was good when it came to trains – be there in plenty of time to spare. Or take an Uber; it would be exorbitantly expensive, but it wasn’t like he was hurting for money.

Thoughts and plans still whirring through his head, he opened the back door and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Ariadne not five feet off, leaning against the kitchen table and tapping anxiously at her phone.

She looked up immediately, face pale and peaked. “Well?”

For a wild moment Dionysus considered lying – saying it was a producer or a funder who wanted to see him, he needed to head back to London, won’t be gone long, sweetheart, don’t worry about a thing.

But he couldn’t go through with it. For one thing, she’d never believe it.

His shoulders slumped. “My father.”

Ariadne’s eyes widened.

“He knows. He wants …” Dionysus ran a hand through his curls. “He wants to see me at seven. Alone. So—so I need to check the timetables, figure out when the next train leaves …”

Ariadne swallowed and nodded. “I’ll get our stuff ready then.”

“Ari, he said alone—”

“I don’t care.” Ariadne stood up straighter, nostrils flaring. “I _don’t_. He wants to shout at someone about disobeying him, he can shout at me. I’m the one who flipped him and his orders the bird.”

“And you can bloody well forget about taking the train,” said Crowley. Dionysus really did jump this time. “I’ll drive you back.”

Crowley was standing by the kitchen door – Aziraphale, Newt, Anathema, and Eris crowded behind him. “We’re both going back with you,” Aziraphale said, in the sort of tone that would not brook argument. “We can discuss whether or not it would be wise for us to accompany you to the meeting as we drive, but you certainly shan’t face this entirely on your own.”

Dionysus blinked, swallowed, and blinked again.

“I’ll go too,” Eris said. “Even if Persephone doesn’t have all the transport lined up, I can get us all into the Underworld as soon as Father’s done chewing you out. You can crash at my place, and we wait down there for Persephone to figure out how we’re getting to LAX.” She grinned. “If only to keep you from selling me out to Father to save your own sorry skin.”

He almost laughed. Almost.

Instead, he gulped and forced himself to breathe deeply. “You’re sure about this? All of you?”

He asked “all of you,” but he looked at Ariadne.

Her face was stony and set, and she nodded. “Absolutely.”

And that was all that needed to be said.

* * *

The drive back to London promised to be tense and fraught, and not just because Crowley’s driving would have done terrible things to the blood pressure of at least two people in the vehicle, had they been human enough to need to worry about blood pressure. As it was, Aziraphale made very few comments about the many times they courted death, and Dionysus barely seemed to notice. In place of conversation, they had Queen playing through the car’s stereo.

And Ariadne sat silent, wondering how it was that Dionysus wasn’t angry at her. This was, after all, entirely her fault. She could have groveled before Zeus and begged for express permission to contact the first people in literal centuries that she had hoped could have given her some answers. He would have said no, or demanded a price for compliance that was higher than what she was willing to pay, but she still could have done it. But she hadn’t, and now Dionysus was getting called on the carpet for it. _Alone_.

Maybe he wasn’t angry with her because it hard to fit anger at her around the anger at his father.

Ariadne glanced sidelong at him, but Dionysus wasn’t looking at her. Instead he scrolled through his phone with the single-minded focus of someone who wasn’t actually seeing anything he was looking at. He’d said practically nothing since they’d departed Jasmine Cottage and made it quite clear that for Aziraphale and Crowley to stick around at Olympic Holdings would hurt far more than it would help. And Ariadne hadn’t even been able to disagree.

She almost wished that Eris was in the car with her, tight squeeze though it would have been. She would have taken them all out of their own heads. But Eris was driving her motorcycle back and had already left them in the figurative and literal dust.

As Ariadne stewed over that, Dionysus shifted, looked up, and spoke. “What is this, Her Majesty’s Most Ominous Playlist?”

“I—what?” Aziraphale asked, glancing first at Crowley and then over his shoulder at Ariadne for a translation.

“Dionysus is objecting to all the Queen that’s playing, and …” Ariadne frowned, remembering the songs that had played since they got underway.

“This is the third time we’re hearing ‘Another One Bites the Dust,’” Dionysus pointed out. “If it has to be Queen, could we maybe work something a little more cheerful into the rotation? ‘Bicycle Race’? ‘Flash’? ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’?”

“I’m afraid I’m not in charge of the musical selectionshere. The Bentley plays what she likes,” Crowley replied. “Although perhaps Ariadne might be able to convince her otherwise, given what else she’s talked this car into.”

Ariadne winced, even though the tone was mostly teasing. Dionysus, however, narrowed his eyes. “Have any of our cars achieved sentience?” he asked Ariadne.

“Not yet.”

“Oh, good.”

He lapsed back into silence, now not even pretending to look at his phone, instead staring out the window.

And that—that just wouldn’t do.

Ariadne fished her phone out of her pocket and opened Spotify. She may or may not be able to knock sense into Zeus’s head – and she certainly wasn’t about to tell the Bentley what she could or couldn’t play – but this, this she could do.

It took no time at all to set up a new playlist. “Would you mind turning off the radio?” Ariadne asked, even as she turned the volume up on the phone.

The music cut out without a single argument from Crowley, which said quite a lot.

Ariadne pressed play.

_Boom, boom, CLAP._

_Boom, boom, CLAP._

Dionysus started and turned to her. “Really?”

Ariadne shrugged. “You wanted something a little more cheerful.”

“ _Buddy, you’re a boy, make a big noise / Playing in the street, gonna be a big man someday!_ ”

“This is still Queen … isn’t it?” asked Aziraphale.

“Yep,” Crowley replied.

“We Will Rock You” segued easily into “We Are the Champions,” just to set the tone, and then, as requested, “Bicycle Race,” “Flash,” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” played in rapid succession. And so on and so forth, all of the most upbeat, happy Queen songs that Ariadne had been able to find on Spotify.

And for the coup de grace, “Don’t Stop Me Now.”

Dionysus raised an eyebrow at her. Ariadne smirked. “Most uplifting song on the planet, according to science.”

_That_ got the first real smile she’d seen out of him since his father had called.

It couldn’t last, because just as “Don’t Stop Me Now” did, in fact, stop, so did the Bentley, rolling up outside the nondescript office building that served as Zeus’s base of operations in London. As Ariadne untangled herself from the seatbelt and put her phone away, Aziraphale looked back at her. “Are you sure you don’t want us to stay close by?”

“Yes,” Dionysus said, swinging himself out of the car.

And with that, there wasn’t much more to say. “I’ll text you as soon as Zeus is done,” Ariadne said, meeting Crowley’s eye in the rearview mirror. “And then we can plan next steps.”

Crowley sat very still – Aziraphale practically vibrated with tension – but after a long moment, both nodded.

And with that, there was nothing for Ariadne to do but get out of the car and join Dionysus on the sidewalk. She made sure to wave as the Bentley pulled away.

Dionysus didn’t. He was too busy staring up at the building, taking deep breaths.

“Hey,” Ariadne said, bumping his hip lightly with her own. He jumped and looked down, his eyes falling on the hand she’d held out.

With a swallow that said more than words ever could, he took it and clung to it.

“It’s going to be ok,” Ariadne said, because someone had to. She didn’t ask _what’s the worst that could happen_ because both of them had far too active imaginations to head down that road.

Dionysus nodded and squared his shoulders, and together they headed inside.

They made it through the first set of double doors without issue. The second Dionysus passed through easily.

Ariadne did not. One moment she was holding Dionysus’s hand and following him into the building, the next she’d walked into an invisible wall, stumbled back and let go of Dionysus’s hand in shock. “Hey!”

Dionysus stopped too, spinning on his heel. “Ari?” He reached back for her—

There was a flash like lightning, and Dionysus pulled his hand away from the doorway as, yelping. “What the—”

“You were told,” said a very familiar, very annoyed voice, “to come alone.”

Dionysus stiffened. “Father.”

And not just his father. At Zeus’s left hand stood Hera, coolly surveying Ariadne with a cocked eyebrow, one hand on her hip, and a faint smile on her lips. It was the sort of look that was designed to remind the looked-upon of every wrinkle in her shirt, hair out of place, and blemish uncovered by makeup, and by every god and goddess out there, it worked.

“If you want to yell at someone, you can at least yell at me!” Ariadne snapped. “I’m the one who went looking for Aziraphale and Crowley; Dionysus wasn’t involved until—”

“Ari. Please,” Dionysus said.

It was about the only thing that could have gotten her to shut up. Ariadne bit back the rest of that sentence and settled for a glare.

Dionysus shot her a smile before turning to Zeus. “Can we just get this over with?”

“There’s certainly no reason to delay,” Hera said. “Come.” And she turned and led the way deeper into the building, Dionysus squaring his shoulders and following.

Ariadne watched him go and forced herself to keep breathing. She might not be allowed inside, but she’d be damned if she was just going to leave him there. She’d stay out in the vestibule if she had to—

Zeus raised an eyebrow at her. “I would have thought you were clever enough to take the hint. He was told to come alone.”

There was absolutely nothing Ariadne could say that wouldn’t be a deathly insult to the king of the gods, so she said nothing.

Zeus snorted and snapped his fingers. There was a sharp _crack_ —

And Ariadne found herself stumbling back, out the door and onto the sidewalk outside the building.

_What the—_ She tried to run back in—

And ran into the invisible wall five feet before the door with enough force that she was spent sprawling backward.

So that was how it was going to be. “Well, fuck you too,” Ariadne muttered.

Then she crossed her arms over her chest and wondered what the hell she was supposed to do next. 

* * *

[1] Often, but not always, rolling her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better. 
> 
> Want to chat more? Come give me a shout-out on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/)! 
> 
> Also, heads up! We are officially at the halfway point (at least in terms of number of chapters), and you all better hold onto your butts, because it's only going to get more intense from here.
> 
> This would also be a really good time to re-check the tags and make sure you're ok with everything I've tagged, because a lot of those tags are going to come into play from here on out.


	18. Another One Bites the Dust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to say it up front: this is a **mind the tags** chapter. The tag that needs to be minded is **temporary character death** , and it happens in the last scene of the chapter (the one that starts " _Archangel Gabriel?_ thought Ariadne").
> 
> I'll post a brief summary of that scene in the end notes so anyone who thinks they might be bothered by it can decide whether they want to read or not.
> 
> (There is also a startling number of f-bombs in this chapter, even for me, but if that sort of thing bothers you, you've probably quit long before now.)

There were any number of sensible things Ariadne could have done upon being locked out of Olympic Holdings. She could have gone back to the Ritz, collected the luggage, and formally checked them out of the room. Or headed to a coffee shop or (given the hour and the city she was in) pub to drown her frustrations in caffeine or liquor. Or even texted Crowley and let him know she’d been kicked out, so she could have someone else to be frustrated with.

She was quite aware that she could do all these things, but she had no intention of doing any of them. Instead, she paced outside the building, testing the wards that had been set.

The idea that she’d be able to brute force her way past wards set by the king of the gods was, of course, ludicrous. If magic power could be measured in horsepower, Ariadne would be a mustang (the type Poseidon made) and Zeus a Mustang (the type Ford made). She could no more hope to break through those wards than Achilles could have hacked his way through the walls of Troy with a spoon.

But the Achaeans hadn’t asked Achilles to hack his way through the walls of Troy with a spoon, because they had known that would be idiotic. They’d found another way in. And power, like certain other tools, was not just about size. It was about what you did with it.

There could be a weak spot. No – there _had to be_ a weak spot. She’d known Zeus for millennia, knew that he was powerful and that _he knew this_. Oh, he could be crafty and cunning when he set his mind to it, but often he didn’t. He leaned on the strongest weapon in his arsenal and only used the others when needed.

Even the king of the gods wasn’t immune to a spot of hubris.

Ariadne took a long, slow breath, gazed up at the building, and tried to think. If she was Zeus, confident that she was stronger than just about any single being in any other pantheon, and she was trying to defend her domain, what would she guard against? What would she not think was a threat?

Her gaze tracked the doors, and the windows, and the brickwork surrounding both, tracking up to the roof …

She blinked.

It couldn’t _possibly_ be that simple. Zeus couldn’t be that blind and obvious – could he? The Greek gods could shapeshift; any one of them could change into an owl or an eagle or a crow and simply fly up to the roof and break in that way, just as Ariadne could.

But would they?

As if in answer to her question, a pigeon came in for a landing and began to roost on the roof.

It didn’t have to mean anything. It was certainly possible to key wards to keep out people and supernatural entities while leaving animals free to roam. It was even possible to key the wards to just one person (her) and let everyone else in or out as they pleased.

Still, it was worth a shot.

Ariadne set off to find an alley. The last thing she needed was to bring her wings out on a busy mortal street and end up featured in a dozen YouTube videos. But as long as she was out of sight when she brought the wings out, well, mortals didn’t often look up. And even if they did, her gray wings would blend into the gathering twilight quite nicely.

Her mind already buzzing with the next stage of her plan, Ariadne ducked into the first alley she saw, wrinkling her nose at the smell—

“Wow,” said a voice from behind her. A voice that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “You’re not even making this hard for us, are you?”

Ariadne hiccupped and spun.

The Xerox goblin, Legion, stood at the end of the alley. Weird rabbit-ear hair and all. And _grinning_.

She wasn’t going to stick around long enough to see if he was packing heat. She called her wings out, bent her knees, and _jumped_.

She didn’t look up. And that was her hubris.

Something that felt like a linebacker tackled her from above and slammed her into the nearest wall.

Ariadne’s head hit the brick with enough force to make her see stars, and her wings screamed in agony. When her vision cleared, she was staring into the eyes of a portly, middle-aged balding man. With brilliant white wings. Who was pinning her to the wall and leering.

Ariadne did exactly what she would do when presented with any portly, middle-aged balding man leering at her and pinning her to a wall, wings or no wings, and kicked him between the legs.

He made a faint “oof” and jerked back, but his vise-like grip stayed put. “Now, now,” he said, and there was that _leer_ again, “is that any way to greet an old work friend of your dad’s?”

_WHAT._

Ariadne shrieked and slammed the heel of her palm into the balding man’s nose.

He shouted as blood began to pour from it, letting go of her shoulder. That was enough for Ariadne to wiggle free and drop to the ground.

She hit it with enough force to cry out, but she didn’t have time for that. Her wing—her wing was hurting enough that she wasn’t sure she could fly, so she had to run, out of the alley and into the street where people were—they wouldn’t be stupid enough to keep going after her where there were people—

She staggered to her feet—

There were three people between her and the entrance of the alley. One was Legion. The other the dark-haired demon from the bookshop – Mephistopheles. And a third one, this one with a thick thatch of white-blond hair and a skin condition.

Ariadne stumbled a step back and turned around. Maybe the other—

There three people between her and the exit of the alley. One was the leering, now-bleeding angel. The other was the tough angel from the bookshop – Samael. And a third one, this one with thick black hair and insultingly handsome features.

The third one stepped forward, smarmy smirk spread across his face. “Ariadne. Hi. Pleasure to finally meet you. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m the Archangel Gabriel …”

His wings popped out as if on cue, their ethereal glow lighting up the alley.

“And I’m your dad’s old boss.”

* * *

There were so many ways a girl like Eris could get in trouble in London at this time of night, and she wasn’t taking advantage of any of them. Instead, she was about five blocks away from Olympic Holdings, sitting on her bike just close enough to traffic to be a nuisance, and scrolling away on her phone.

 _What a waste,_ she thought, cheerfully flipping the bird to the latest driver to lay on the horn as they careened past her.

Of course, she could cause plenty of trouble with a cell phone and an unlimited data plan. That wasn’t the point. The point was that it was more fun to do so in person. Blowing up Reddit threads and trolling the neckbeards on 4chan were better saved for nights when it was too cold or wet or miserable to leave the house.

Yet here she was, and here she would remain for the foreseeable future, all because Ari hadn’t covered her tracks well enough and Zeus was getting into a snit about it—

It was at this point that it became clear that Eris was in no way a prophetic deity, because her trouble-sense did not so much quietly _ping_ as wake up from a dead sleep and shout, _A-WOOOOOOO-GA!_

Eris sat up straight and looked around, mouthing, _The fuck?_ but unable to hear it over the cacophony in her head.[1] The klaxon call of the trouble-sense didn’t quiet down a bit.

Eris dropped her phone in her jacket pocket, kicked the bike to life, and roared into the street without looking.

Finding the source of the trouble wasn’t at all like playing that kids’ game, “Hot and Cold.” It was more like following the sound of a dozen nuclear bombs going off. It was not, in other words, hard to miss.

And it led her straight to an alley not far from Olympic Holdings.

Eris didn’t head inside – she was chaotic neutral, not chaotic stupid. She killed the bike’s engine, drew every bit of don’t-see-me magic she possessed around herself, and crept to the alley’s entrance.

Slowly, she edged around the corner and looked inside.

_Oh fuck oh fuck OH FUCK!_

Eris jerked back, breathing hard.

There had been seven people in that alley. Three close to her with black wings out. Three at the other end with white wings out. And one in the middle, huddled on the ground, with gray wings out.

_FUUUUCK!_

And there was no way she could help. Eris wasn’t one of the Twelve. The amount of trouble radiating out of that alley was more than she could hope to handle, even with Ari by her side. And with the two of them outnumbered three-to-one? For-fucking-get about it.

_Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!_

She needed backup. And her favorite partner-in-crime was MIA, still stuck in Tadfield and wearing Tom Hiddleston’s face thanks to _his_ father’s orders. She would have to—

She glanced at the Olympic Holdings building.

… Now _that_ was an idea.

But first things first. Eris pulled her phone out of her pocket and shot off a text to Crowley.

Then she ran to her bike and hopped back on it, racing toward the Olympic Holdings building and tossing Discord magic like cherry bombs every few feet.

If that didn’t get her parents’ attention or Dionysus’s attention or another of her siblings’ attention—

Well, then they were well and truly fucked, weren’t they?

* * *

Zeus had been lecturing Dionysus for fifteen minutes straight, barely a pause for breath and forget about getting a word in edgewise. Were it happening to anyone else, Dionysus might have almost found it funny.

Almost.

And since it was happening to him …

Dionysus took a deep breath and wished for a drink.

Not that he had been offered one – not even water. Zeus had been too intent on his recitation of every way Dionysus had been a disappointment, starting back in sometime BC, each paling in comparison to this epic screw-up, of course. And Dionysus had no choice but to sit there, take it, and hope that whenever Zeus got to the point of consequences, that they wouldn’t be too severe.

And in all of this, Hera had said nothing. She stood near Zeus, to the left of his desk chair and a little behind. Her arms were crossed, perfectly manicured nails tapping lightly on toned biceps. And the look in her eyes was not joyful, or annoyed, or even disappointed, but speculative.

Dionysus had made the mistake of meeting her eyes more than once, and each time he had shuddered.

Now Zeus actually paused, and Dionysus held his breath, bracing himself for whatever chapter of the tirade was coming next—

And froze.

Even within whatever wards were keeping Ariadne out, he felt the unmistakable pop of Eris’s Discord.

“Did you feel that?” he heard himself ask.

It was the first thing he’d said since taking the uncomfortable chair on the other side of Zeus’s desk. It was the wrong thing to say.

Zeus slowly raised an eyebrow. “What,” he asked, “does that have to do with anything?”

“It’s Eris,” Dionysus said. He found himself craning his neck to look out the window. “She—”

_Pop!_

“She did it again!” Now Dionysus was out of his chair and loping toward the window, hackles rising and stomach dropping. If Eris was causing trouble so close and so blatantly, then she had to have a reason for it – and the reason couldn’t have been trying to save Dionysus’s hide—

“Dionysus,” Zeus said in a tone that suggested this would be Dionysus’s first and final warning, “I am not finished. I suggest you sit down.”

“But she’s—”

_Pop!_

“She’s up to something!”

Hera blinked; Zeus only snorted. “Obviously. But if I were to drop everything every time I felt your sister getting up to mischief, I’d never get anything done.”

“But—”

“Dionysus. Sit. _Down_.”

The tone of command very nearly made his knees buckle. Dionysus swallowed, returned to the chair, and sat.

“Now, as I was saying …”

But Dionysus wasn’t listening. Every time there was another _pop!_ of Discord, he jumped, gaze going to the window.

Zeus’s glower deepened every time, until he was forward to interrupt his rant and say in his lowest, most ominous rumble, “Son—”

“Zeus.” Hera put her hand on Zeus’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go and see what Eris wants?”

“What? Why would—” Zeus started.

And stopped, raising an eyebrow at Hera.

If Dionysus had been any less distracted, he might have noticed the speaking look that passed between the pair. As it was, he was too busy straining his senses for any hint of what was behind Eris’s antics, wondering if he dared to take his phone out and try to get some answers in the mortal way.

Zeus sighed. It almost sounded theatrical. “She’s not going to let up until we see what she wants, I suppose. Right. I’ll go deal with this. You.”

Now Zeus fixed Dionysus with a glare, and now Zeus had his full attention.

“Don’t move.”

And without a further word, he stood and strode to the door and out of it.

When the door closed, the room was blanketed in a cocoon of quiet. Even the ticking of the clock on the bookshelf seemed hushed.

And though Dionysus continued to strain his senses, he couldn’t catch so much as an echo of Eris’s magic.

“That’s better,” said Hera. And she slipped into Zeus’s chair.

She smiled at him.

Dionysus held his breath.

“Now you and I can have a chat.”

* * *

Crowley drummed the fingers of one hand on the steering wheel even as the other tossed a coin into the air. “Call it.”

“Heads,” said Aziraphale.

The coin landed. Tails. He’d be flipping again. “Call it.”

“Tails.”

This time the angel got it. Crowley rearranged the traffic so he could get into the right-hand turn lane and turned at the light.

This certainly wasn’t the most creative way he’d thought of whiling away the time, but … it was something, and they had to do something until Ariadne texted him and said that Dionysus was done being raked over the coals. They couldn’t go back to the bookshop; Heaven or Hell or both could have trap waiting for them there. His flat was out for the same reason. And stopping in a pub or a restaurant felt too much like being a sitting duck.

So they were reduced to driving aimlessly through London’s darkening streets, varying the route by means of coin tosses. After all – it’d be blessed hard for Heaven or Hell or both to predict where they were going next if they themselves didn’t know which way, or even if, they’d be turning at a given intersection.

A psychologist might have called the game a sign of paranoia. Crowley would have retorted that it was bloody hard to be paranoid when they actually _were_ out to get you.

“I wish they would have let us stay with them,” Aziraphale sighed.

“I’m inclined to believe Dionysus when he says that would only make things worse.”

“True, I just …” Aziraphale shook his head.

Crowley put his hand on the console between them, a silent invitation. Aziraphale took it, threading their fingers together.

Crowley might not have moved his hand until the next intersection and coin flip – or he might have asked Aziraphale to flip the bloody coin; he still had a hand free – but his phone chose that moment to buzz.

Even as he disentangled his hand with reluctance, he told himself not to be annoyed. It was probably Ariadne, texting to say that she and Dionysus were done and they could figure out their next move now. He pulled the phone from his pocket—

It was a text. It wasn’t Ariadne.

**ARI GOT JUMPED THREE OF YOUR FRIENDS THREE OF AZ’S GET YOUR ASSES BACK HERE!**

The text was from Eris. And for a split second, the message refused to make sense. Ari? Az’s?

And then it did.

“ _FUCK!_ ” Crowley shouted, and threw the Bentley into a U-turn that broke every rule of the road and at least one law of physics.

“Crowley! What on earth—”

“It’s Ariadne—she’s in trouble!” And he tossed the phone to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale yelped as he caught it. There was a half-second of silence as he read the text. Then, quietly, “Oh, God in Heaven.”

“Can we not bring Her into this?!”

Aziraphale didn’t answer, just slipped his left hand into the oh-shit bar and held on tight.

He didn’t say anything until Crowley practically invented a lane so he could slip between a lorry and a bus. “Crowley, is there any way—”

“Angel, if you ask me to slow down now, I swear—”

“I was actually going to ask if you could go faster.”

Crowley should not have taken his eyes off the road, but still he turned and goggled at Aziraphale.

Aziraphale was pale. And his knuckles were white. But even though he gulped, all he asked was, “Well?”

Crowley slammed the accelerator to the floor, and the Bentley sped off into the night.

* * *

_Archangel Gabriel?_ Ariadne thought, glancing from one end of the alley to the other and back again. _The one who goes around telling virgins they’ve been knocked up? Heaven’s OB/GYN?_

If she was in a movie, she would have said that. And perhaps it would have knocked Gabriel and the rest of them off balance for a second. And that second would have been enough for Ariadne to pull some power that had been vaguely hinted at in the first act out of her ass and use it to make a daring escape.

She really wished she was in a movie.

“Nothing to say for yourself?” asked Gabriel.

“We sure this is Crowley’s spawn?” asked the white-haired demon. “He couldn’t shut up if his continued existence depended on it.”

So much for hoping they’d only figured out the one half.

Her heart thudded in her ears, her breath came faster, and something—something white-hot and incandescent came to life just under her skin—

 _YES!_ Ariadne thought, grabbing the power and throwing it at the nearest opponent. Gabriel.

The jet of white light shot out, hit him square in the chest—

And fizzled.

Gabriel stared at his chest, then at her. “Did you … just try to _smite_ me?”

Legion laughed. “She just tried to smite an archangel!”

The white-hot power was still there. Ariadne grabbed it again, gasping with the effort, and lobbed it at Legion.

“Oh _FUCK!_ ” Legion yelped – and then there were two Legions – and then the light hit – and there was only one Legion.

“T-t-try that again,” Legion gasped. “There’s more of us than there are of you!”

Ariadne had a better idea. She grabbed another thread of power and threw it – this time at Mephistopheles.

Mephistopheles yelped and dodged, the light soaring harmlessly where he’d been standing.

And Ariadne ran. The opening was all she needed; if she got out of the alley, if she got to where there were people—

She barely registered the white-haired demon lazily reaching up and snapping his fingers.

A jet of fire leapt up from the pavement – Ariadne shrieked, throwing her arm over her face and stumbling back – the flame licked her arm and good _gods_ , that _hurt_ —

“Oi, watch it!” shouted the leering angel. “You could bloody well kill us too!”

“If she can smite, she can burn!” the white-haired demon shouted back.

“That was not the plan!” Gabriel yelled.

The flame surrounded her on all sides now. It smelled like sulfur and reached for her.

Ariadne’s wing still hurt – her arm too now – but what other choice did she have? She looked up and jumped.

The thermals from the fire lifted her up—one flap worked for two—a few more and she’d be high enough to take to the open sky and—

Mephistopheles burst through the flames and caught her around the waist.

Ariadne screamed and kicked and pounded whatever parts of him she could reach. She reached for his hair and pulled, still flapping, still trying to get up—

Except—he was pushing her up—

“Sorry!” Mephistopheles whispered to her—Ariadne had no idea how she was able to hear him, but she was—and then he threw her—

Ariadne twisted in the air, ignoring how her wing cried out in agony with the movement—

A strong arm locked around her, pinning her arms to her side and her wings between her body and that of whoever had grabbed her.

Ariadne shrieked and started kicking.

“Stop _struggling_ , you idiot girl!” hissed a female voice in her ear – Samael? “Are you trying to get yourself killed? Never mind, don’t answer that.”

A hand slapped over her mouth before Ariadne could disobey. Ariadne bit.

“ _Ow_!”

But Samael’s hand didn’t move.

“Ariadne, listen to me,” Samael said. This wasn’t just a low voice—she was practically whispering in Ariadne’s ear. “I’m going to discorporate you, and then I’m going to stab the body with a firmament blade. Just like your father’s. When I discorporate you, you need to get the hell away from this body before the blade hits – or else it’ll do to you what Hope should have done to your other father. Do you understand?”

 _No?!?!_ Ariadne tried to shake her head.

“I know you don’t want to trust me, and I don’t blame you, but I am literally your only hope right now,” Samael said, shifting her hold on Ariadne’s mouth. “And one more thing. When you get discorporated, don’t show up in Heaven or Hell. Neither is going to be happy to see you. _Find somewhere else to be_.”

Still Ariadne struggled—she didn’t understand; she couldn’t trust this bitch; she didn’t even know what discorporating was—

It didn’t matter.

Samael’s fingers found Ariadne’s jaw. There was a twist and a crack and an explosion of white light before her eyes—

And then everything went black. 

* * *

[1] And the traffic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Mind the tags summary** : Ariadne is trapped in an alley and surrounded by Hastur, Mephistopheles, and Legion on one side with Gabriel, Sandalphon, and Samael on the other. There is a brief fight in which Ariadne largely gets her ass handed to her. Samael discorporates Ariadne at the end of the fight. The scene ends as Ariadne's vision cuts out.
> 
> ... WHEW!
> 
> As usual, thanks for reading, comments give me life, and if you want to chat more, feel free to hit me up on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/)!


	19. Bottom of Pandora's Box

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another mind the tags chapter. We're still dealing with the aftermath of the temporary character death from last chapter, but our viewpoint characters don't know it's temporary. There is a description of injuries received by a character, and some characters' thoughts get a bit dark, but like the character death, they are temporary.
> 
> Details on what to skip are in the end notes.

When the corporation that had once housed Ariadne Tavros hit the ground, a small psychic burst, something like an electromagnetic pulse, shot across London.

It traversed through most humans and even plenty of immortals harmlessly, leaving no trace of its passing. It was not meant for them.

Those immortals whom it was meant for experienced it differently.

To the angels Sandalphon and Gabriel, it was a familiar experience from a different angle. They had seen a similar Wrath before, even wielded it as their own. But they had never felt it directed at _them_. They paled, exchanged glances, and without a word to each other or to their counterparts on the other side of the ring of Hellfire, took flight.

To the demons Hastur and Legion, the Wrath was more than familiar. It was the push before the Fall. And without a word to their counterparts on the other side of the ring of Hellfire or even a glance at each other, they burrowed into the earth and sank down, down, down.

To the angel Samael and the demon Mephistopheles, there was no Wrath. Anger, yes, but anger with and for rather than at, and with the anger came sadness and understanding, however reluctant. It was that understanding that gave Mephistopheles the courage to catch Samael’s eye and nod before following his fellow demons down, and it was that sadness that allowed Samael to nod back before following her fellow angels up.

The pulse reached Eris next, still circling Olympic Holdings and throwing Discord every few feet. This time it was sad, but there was an undercurrent of respect and gratitude. Eris pulled the bike to a stop and took her helmet off, looking wonderingly at the cloudy sky above.

When the pulse reached the Olympic Holdings building, it found Dionysus first, still seated across a desk from Hera, attempting to listen to her offer. It came to him as grief, at first, but tinged with comfort, running a hand through his hair like a mother’s soothing caress. It made Dionysus jump and look around, wondering where the phantom touch had come from.

Hera felt it next, and to her it felt like fury, and what was worse, disappointment. She quite forgot what she had been saying to Dionysus, sitting up straight with her mouth agape. Zeus, pacing outside the door, felt much the same thing, and it bowled him over like a punch to the gut.

Lastly the pulse found a vintage Bentley careening through the street, only a handful of blocks away from the fateful alley. Now it was the full-throated grief of the Virgin in the Pietà, though underneath the grief was a spark of hope, a sense that all was not yet lost and that the story was not over.

“Did you—” Aziraphale asked, or began to ask, while Crowley swore and pounded the accelerator with even more extreme prejudice.

The pulse faded. Its message was sent, its mission finished.

And softly, rain began to fall.

* * *

“Call Eris,” Crowley said, swerving around a taxi at a speed that, at any other time, Aziraphale would swear was sure to get them discorporated. “We need to know where Ariadne was when she—”

_SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH!!!!_

A motorbike pulled into the lane before them; Crowley slammed on the brakes and Aziraphale squeezed his eyes shut and held on for what could only be called dear life—

He didn’t dare to open them until his head had nearly knocked into the dashboard and he heard someone tapping – pounding, really – at his window.

Crowley snapped his fingers and the window was gone. “Eris!”

And it was Eris, her long blond hair plastered to her head, her helmet hanging useless off her arm. “Fucking finally! Come on, Ari and your buddies are this way!” And without a further word, she kicked the bike to life, her hair streaming out behind her in the wind.

Once again, Aziraphale held on for dear life. Luckily, they were close enough that even Eris and Crowley couldn’t accelerate to dangerous speeds before they had to stop. Eris drove her motorcycle onto the pavement; Crowley snapped a space to park into being and threw the Bentley into it.

Aziraphale was out of the car as soon as it had come to a more-or-less complete stop. Crowley was right behind him.

If he’d been thinking clearly, he’d realized he should have waited for Eris to lead the way and say exactly what she had seen and where Ariadne was. But he wasn’t thinking clearly, because as soon as he’d stepped out of the car, he’d caught a whiff of sulfur on the breeze.

Sulfur. Brimstone. _Hellfire_.

“ARIADNE!”

He followed his nose and started running.

“AZIRAPHALE! AZIRAPHALE, WAIT!”

He didn’t wait. Never mind that he didn’t have any kind of weapon or any idea how he’d take on three angels and three demons. Because all he could think was _Hellfire_ and _Ariadne_ and _no no no no no!_

He rounded the corner of the alley, gathering every shred of power he had in him and preparing to throw it. He normally didn’t smite in fear or in anger, but he didn’t have a choice if Ariadne—

There was no one in the alley. Just a crackle of ozone and a low-burning circle of Hellfire, more embers than flame. And in the middle of the circle—

“Ariadne!”

She lay in a crumpled heap, curled up on her side with her hair spilling loose and her poor wings twisted and bedraggled. She wasn’t moving or breathing, but that was all right, it didn’t matter, they didn’t _need_ to move or breathe or—

Aziraphale jumped over the dying remains of the Hellfire and almost immediately fell to his knees next to Ariadne. Now that he was closer, he could see more damage. Redness around her mouth, a bruise on her neck (which was bent at entirely the wrong sort of angle), a nasty-looking burn on one arm—

But it didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. All of it was fixable. It was just damage to the corporation, that was all. Crowley could fix the Hellfire burn if he couldn’t—

Aziraphale passed his hand over Ariadne’s head and neck, then her arm (no good, he’d have to ask Crowley), then her poor wings. The bones snapped back into place; the bruise faded.

“There you are, dear girl, all better,” Aziraphale said. His voice was shaking, but that couldn’t be right, because he’d fixed the damage, hadn’t he? All the worst of it, at least. “Open your eyes now; that’s a good girl.”

She didn’t.

“Ariadne?” Aziraphale whispered.

“Angel!”

That was Crowley, dropping next to him. Something metal clattered to the ground beside him. “For the love of _Someone_ , angel, don’t—”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale forced a smile; he had to, he couldn’t—he couldn’t lose faith now. Not in front of Crowley. “She’s got a Hellfire burn; I couldn’t do anything with it, could you …?” And Aziraphale gently pushed her, angling her so Crowley could more easily get to her arm.

Except Crowley, who had somehow lost his sunglasses between the car and the circle, wasn’t looking at her arm.

“Angel,” he said, voice sounding strangled. His corporation had gone several shades paler.

Aziraphale forced himself to look where Crowley was looking.

There was a hole in Ariadne’s side and a pool of blood. The hole was just under her armpit, a spot much favored by the Romans with their short gladiuses.

But no Roman gladius would leave burns on its victim’s clothes …

“No …” Aziraphale gasped.

“I can fix this!” Crowley’s voice was desperate, as if he were trying to convince himself. He closed his eyes, put his forefingers to his temples, then put the fingers to Ariadne’s temples. “Wake up, Ariadne.”

She didn’t move.

“Ariadne. _Ariadne_. Come _on_. Wake up, sweetie. Your dads are here, and we need …” Crowley’s voice grew more panicked with every syllable. “We need you to wake up!”

“You’re not fixing her.” Eris. Aziraphale turned to see her staring at them, at Ariadne, chalk-white and trembling. “Why can’t you fix her? This—” Her hands balled into fists and she started to shake. “This is your whole schtick! You’re supposed to be able to bring people back from the dead!”

_Dead?_ No, no, she couldn’t be—

“Ariadne!” Crowley was shaking her. “Wake! Up!”

But a firmament blade, a flaming sword right to the heart—

“Crowley,” Aziraphale heard himself say.

Crowley looked up. His eyes were all yellow and a thin-slit pupil, not a hint of white to be seen.

“She …”

“No,” Crowley shook his head. “No, don’t say it. She isn’t—she can’t be. We have to be able to fix this.”

“She’s _gone_ , dear boy.”

The rain began to fall harder.

* * *

It was pouring buckets by the time Zeus and Hera let Dionysus go. And given the rain, the sensible thing would have been to wait in the lobby while he called Ariadne, or maybe even Crowley, and figured out their next step.

Dionysus was not in the mood to be sensible. Not after he’d felt Eris tossing Discord around like beads at a Mardi Gras parade. He stormed into the night.

The second he set food outside, he could feel faint hints of Discord lingering like the smell of burnt popcorn. He couldn’t get more of a read on them than that. They seemed to surround the building, the rain and the wind further muddling the trail.

Sighing, Dionysus took his phone out and called Ariadne.

_Ring …_

_Ring …_

_Ring …_

Why wasn’t she picking up?

_Ring …_

_Ring …_

“Hello, you’ve reached the voicemail of Ariadne Tavros. I’m not available to take your call, but leave your name and number after the beep, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

_Beep!_

Dionysus hung up. Ariadne would call him back as soon as she saw the missed call.

And her not answering was nothing to worry about. Really. It was, after all, pouring buckets. Ariadne, being a sensible person, would have found shelter from the rain. Probably in a pub too loud to hear herself think. She’d be checking her phone every few minutes, no doubt. He just had to be patient.

In the meantime …

He fired off a text to Eris – **Felt you making trouble, what’s up?** – then looked up and got a face full of rain for his trouble.

Maybe he could be a sensible person and find a pub. Or a bus stop or tube station. Someplace dry.

Hands plunged into his pockets and shoulders hunched against the cold, he started walking.

But he couldn’t outwalk his thoughts. Or his fear or his worry. His mind jumped like a drug-addled grasshopper from one thought to the next. Eris’s Discord – and his father’s yelling – and Hera’s quite frankly _bizarre_ offer – and then there was that feeling, the one that seemed to want to comfort him while spooking Hera – and Ariadne still hadn’t called him back—

His thoughts were distracting enough that he didn’t even notice the motorcycle parked in the middle of the sidewalk until he walked right into it.

_Who the hell parks a—_ Dionysus began to think, all while swearing and hopping away from the motorcycle, until he got a closer look at it.

He _recognized_ that motorcycle.

_Eris?_ But if her motorcycle was here—then where was Eris?

Something like panic began to rise in him—

And then his phone rang, and the relief that flooded through him was more intoxicating than the best damn wine he’d ever tasted, even if it did make him jump. He didn’t even look at the caller, just answered. “Ari?”

Silence.

The panic began to rise again. But before he could act on it, a voice spoke on the other end of the line.

“Oh, fuck.”

“ _Eris_?” Dionysus pulled the phone away from his ear, and—yes, that was Eris’s name on the screen. But he’d never heard her sound so miserable before. “What’s wrong?”

“Where are you?”

This wasn’t the time to get into stupidity like _I asked you first._ “Right by your bike – where are _you_?”

The torrent of swearing – all of it in Greek – that followed that was fierce enough that Dionysus jerked the phone away from his ear.

It was at that point he realized he was hearing the swearing from two different angles – one the phone, the other the alley about ten feet in front of him.

“Eris?” he called, hanging up.

And Eris spilled out of the alley.

Her hair was straggling and soaking wet, her leather jacket hanging limply off her shoulders. And her makeup was smudged and smeared, especially around her eyes, where it looked like—

“Have you been crying?” Dionysus asked, horrified – and worried – because unholy terror though she was, Eris was still his sister, and anything that would make her cry would … realistically not get its ass kicked by Dionysus, but he’d happily call up Ares and let him handle the ass-kicking while Dionysus helped Eris drown her sorrows in her substance of choice.

“I’m sorry,” she said, lower lip wobbling, “I’m really sorry. It’s just—there were _six_ of them, ok, and all together they were way more than I could handle on my own, and I thought, fuck, it’s not going to do us any good if I just get flattened, so I called for backup, but by the time we all got here, she—” Eris stopped, hand pressed to her mouth and breathing sharply through her nose.

“She?” Dionysus asked, looking toward the alley.

“Nooo!” Eris grabbed his shoulders and rooted him to the spot. “No. No, you don’t— _trust me_ , you don’t want to go in there, you don’t want to see her like that—”

The rising panic in his mind couldn’t stand to listen to any more of that. Dionysus shook her off and ran for the entrance of the alley.

He rounded the corner—

The first thing he noticed was the whiff of rotten eggs, lingering despite the pouring rain. The next was Aziraphale and Crowley, clinging to each other so hard Dionysus couldn’t tell who was holding who.

The third thing—

Lightning flashed, turning the alley into a photo negative. And maybe that was why he saw what he did. A scene from _Sleeping Beauty,_ 1959\. Maleficent at the top of the little tower room, contempt written all over her face as she stared down at the three good fairies. A bit of gloating, a mini-monologue really, and then a pulling back of her dark cloak and a triumphant, _“Well, here’s your precious princess!”_

Because Ariadne looked like that. Limbs spread every which way, hand stretched uselessly before her, red curls spilling over the pavement.

Except … all that red wasn’t just her hair …

“ _ARI!_ ”

The thunderclap that followed shook the city.

* * *

Time passed. Crowley wasn’t sure how much. The rain was letting up, which was … something.

Funny. It’d been raining the last time he’d felt this bloody awful, too. Not that he’d cared. He’d been too busy finding a pub, then getting utterly pissed and waiting for the world to end and take him with it. Hadn’t seemed to be much point in doing anything else.

And now …

Well, now he had the angel with him, holding him like it was the last tether holding him together, and Crowley … he’d savor it while it lasted. Because it wouldn’t. The angel would want nothing to do with him once his brain caught up with his heart and he realized this whole fucking mess was all Crowley’s fault.

Because, the thing was, in the space between Aziraphale’s agonized _She’s gone_ and Dionysus running into the alley and clutching Ariadne to him (and oh, didn’t _that_ dredge up memories Crowley had been trying to beat down with a shovel for literal millennia) and whenever _now_ was, Crowley had been thinking. Thinking about things like _he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel_ and how an _Eva_ turned into an _Ave_ and how, in the greatest cosmic joke of them all, _God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son_.

Six thousand years ago, Crowley had been told to _go up there and make trouble_ , and so he had. And because of the trouble he’d made, the Almighty had to send Her Son or an aspect of Herself (he still wasn’t sure on that) down to earth to be nailed to a tree and slowly suffocate and/or drown in His own bodily fluids. And now, some two thousand-ish years later, right after Crowley had deliberately attempted to fuck up the Apocalypse and dragged the angel with him in that endeavor …

He glanced up – forced himself to look at Dionysus holding Ariadne, rocking back and forth, brushing her hair back from her face.

The Almighty was getting Her revenge.

He shuddered. Aziraphale felt it and pulled him closer.

And Crowley, like the craven coward he was, let him. Huddled near and basked in his warmth. Took what he could get now, because the minute Aziraphale pulled away, he’d let him go. Even a demon could only hurt the one he loved so much.

_But between You and me, O Lord,_ he thought, _this? This is fucked up even on Your scale. Because Your Son, He bloody well knew what he was getting into. Read the whole contract and still signed on the dotted line. Ariadne didn’t know; she didn’t ask for any of this; she just—_

Crowley held his breath and bit his lower lip until blood came to keep the sob in.

_She just had questions! Why is that the one sin You can’t forgive?_

He might have stayed there for days, or weeks, or eons, or as long as Aziraphale would let him, shouting silent questions at an Almighty who wouldn’t answer, but for one thing. He heard something. Footsteps at the end of the alley.

And because some habits simply didn’t die, no matter how much stress you put them under, he looked up.

There was a demon lurking at the end of the alley. A demon Crowley recognized.

“ _Mephistopheles_!” He was up then, snapping the tire iron he’d dropped next to Ariadne into his hand without breaking stride as he marched to the other demon.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale called out, scrambling to his feet and taking hold of Crowley’s free hand.

Mephistopheles blanched and tried to back away. “Crowley—Crowley, whatever you’re thinking—”

“Did you have sssomething to do with thisss?” Crowley asked, swinging the tire iron to gesture widely to the alley, to Aziraphale, to—to—Ariadne.

“N-n-not in the way you’re thinking—”

“Liar!” That was Eris, shouting from where she’d taken up station by Dionysus. “You think I can’t tell one flavor of trouble from another? Besides, I _saw_ you, asshole!”

Mephistopheles glanced at her, and that was all the opening Crowley needed. He dropped the tire iron, dropped Aziraphale’s hand, grabbed Mephistopheles by the collar and slammed him into the wall.

“ _WHY_?!”

It was a bloody stupid question. He knew why. He’d known why since the moment he’d picked that sleeping newborn up, seen her red hair and blue eyes, and figured out just what he and the angel had done. But Crowley would be damned again if he didn’t force at least one denizen of Hell to look him in the eye and answer him.

Maybe, when Aziraphale left him, he’d head Downstairs and make a few more demons tell him why, at least until the inevitable happened. It would be one way to pass the time.

“It’s—it’s n-not what you think!” Mephistopheles stammered, trying to struggle out of Crowley’s grip, but there was no way in Heaven, Hell, or any other spiritual or material plane that he was wiggling out of this one. “And it w-wasn’t my idea—well, it w-was, but—”

“What?” Aziraphale demanded in a tone Crowley hadn’t heard in years.

“I d-d-didn’t have m-much choice! D-Duke Hastur—”

Hastur. Of course. A bit of Crowley leapt up and snarled in anger, but the much larger part of him sighed in resignation. Crowley had killed Ligur, so Hastur would kill someone important to Crowley. As if he needed more confirmation that this was all his fault.

“So you were just following orders, is that it?” Aziraphale asked, and this was _definitely_ a tone Crowley hadn’t heard in a long time, or perhaps ever.

Crowley dared a glance over his shoulder, where Aziraphale stood stone-faced and obdurate. There wasn’t a flicker of pity on his countenance.

And Crowley understood suddenly why Gabriel and the rest of them might have thought that Aziraphale would make a very fine Guardian of the Eastern Gate.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale ordered, “let him go.”

“What?” asked Crowley.

“What?” gasped Mephistopheles.

“Why?” demanded Eris.

Aziraphale answered Eris’s question, but it was Crowley whom he addressed. “Because I’m going to smite him, and I certainly don’t want you catching a backdraft of that, dear boy.”

“Wait, no!” Mephistopheles’s struggles intensified. “You d-d-don’t understand—”

“Then _explain_ ,” Aziraphale snapped, “because while patience is a virtue, I’m feeling a bit short on it at the moment.”

“SHE’S NOT DEAD!” Mephistopheles shouted. “She’s discorporated! Just discorporated!”

Aziraphale’s eyes widened, but Crowley … Crowley could not let himself go down that road. Not without more proof.

He slammed Mephistopheles against the wall again. “Why should we believe you?”

“Because I’m the one who discorporated her. Now I suggest you let my friend go …”

Crowley felt the breeze, smelled the ozone, and glanced to the right to see Samael coming in for a landing.

“Or you’ll see exactly what the Archangel of Destruction can do when she gets angry.” Samael folded her wings away, and with a flick of her wrist, manifested a flaming sword out of nowhere.

There were far too many bits and pieces of that demanding Crowley’s attention at once, which was probably why Aziraphale was able to do what he did. “Crowley, let go and get behind me. _Now_.”

And Crowley obeyed.

Mephistopheles sagged in relief, but not for long – Aziraphale’s hand shot out, not touching him, just pointing. With intent, one might say. “I suggest you explain what is going on here,” he said, posture ramrod straight and not taking his gaze off Samael, “or your friend will be smitten in very short order.”

Samael raised an eyebrow. “Principality. Do you really think you can stand against me?”

“One,” Aziraphale said.

Now Samael blinked. “Let Mephistopheles go, and then we’ll talk.”

“Two.”

“Do not meddle with me, Principality—”

Even Crowley couldn’t have said what would happen when Aziraphale got to three. So perhaps it was a good thing he didn’t. A flash of lightning stopped his counting, followed almost immediately by a rumble of thunder.

Except it wasn’t thunder.

“Shut. Up.”

It was Dionysus.

He’d put Ariadne down, so gently, but that was about all the resemblance he bore to the worried young man who’d burst into Aziraphale’s shop and immediately started a lovers’ spat. This was a god of Olympus, with grape leaves in his hair and divine madness in his burgundy eyes. And he was not happy.

“Explain,” he said to Samael, “exactly what _discorporated_ means, or you are going to wish I let my father-in-law smite you and your friend.”

Samael blinked, taken aback. “You don’t—you don’t know?”

“To take the name of one of your bosses in vain, Jesus H. Christ,” Eris snapped. “Why the fuck would we know what means?”

“C-c-corpus!” Mephistopheles stammered. The gazes of both gods locked on him. He quailed but kept going. “The Latin! Body! And—and dis, not! So … not in the body!”

Dionysus frowned. “What? What’s not in the body?”

“Ariadne!”

“The corporation,” oh, and _there_ was the Aziraphale Crowley knew, never missing a chance for pedantry, “it’s not – it’s not _Ariadne_ the way humans think of a body as being them. It’s a tool for when she’s on earth. And if something happens to the corporation, then …”

Aziraphale’s hand dropped. “Oh, God. She never Fell.”

Crowley didn’t think he’d ever heard the angel sound half so scared.

“She’s not in Heaven,” Samael said. “I checked. Discorporation office, infirmary, even with St. Peter. There’s no sign of her Upstairs.”

And now it was Crowley’s turn to feel like he’d been punched in the gut. “Original sssin?”

“Not in Hell, either,” said Mephistopheles. “I checked, too.”

“And I _told_ her to find somewhere else to go,” Samael said.

“What the Heaven would that do?” Crowley shouted. “She wouldn’t know what you were talking about!”

Samael stared. “Wait. You—”

“SHUT UP!” Dionysus shouted. “You’re talking about Heaven. And Hell. Are you saying that Ari went to an afterlife?”

Samael blinked. “Well, I—”

“Yes!” Mephistopheles answered – and shrank into himself when the rest of them stared at him.

“An afterlife,” Dionysus said. “So—Persephone!”

Dionysus pulled his phone out of his pocket, hands shaking. He stabbed the home button and demanded, “Call Persephone!” And he put it on speaker.

_Ring …_

_Ring …_

“Hey, Dionysus!”

Hearing that voice again – sounding so chipper, too – almost made Crowley stagger. Perhaps it had a similar effect on Dionysus, because his voice cracked when he asked, “Is Ari with you?”

“… What?”

“Ari. Is she down there? In the Underworld? With you?”

“Huh? I haven’t gotten the transport sorted out yet; I was waiting for Ari to tell me you guys were ready—”

“Not like that!” Dionysus’s voice cracked again. “Like—like a mortal. She got—they’re all calling it _discorporated_ —it’s—I think it’s the soul separating from the body—”

“ _What_?! She’s _dead_?”

“No, not dead!” Samael said. “Discorporated! The corporation got too damaged, so she got out of it!”

“Who’s that?” Persephone asked. “And why are we talking about corporations?”

“Some angelic asshole, and it’s—complicated,” Dionysus said, glaring at Samael. “Is she down there, Persephone? Please tell me she’s down there.”

“I … I will find out!” Persephone said. “I’ll call Charon and—and I’ll get Thanatos on the case too. If she’s down here, we’ll find her. You just hang in there, ok?”

Dionysus gulped hard and nodded.

“And what about you?” Persephone asked. “Where are you? Who’s with you?”

“London. Close to Father’s office. And—and Ari’s parents are here, and some demon and some angel, and …”

Dionysus stopped, looking from side to side. “Wait. Where’s Eris?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There were no footnotes in this chapter ... that's how you know shit got real. Anyway, here's what you want to skip if you're worried about the tags:
> 
> Aziraphale's scene (second one, beginning with "'Call Eris,' Crowley said,") includes a description of the injuries Ariadne received in the fight. You'll want to skip the paragraph that starts with "Aziraphale jumped over the dying remains of the Hellfire" if you're seeking to avoid that, and also the paragraphs that start with "There was a hole" and "But no Roman gladius."
> 
> If you're worried about dark character thoughts, you'll want to avoid the first part of Crowley's scene (the last one, beginning with "Time passed."). He manages to convince himself that a) Ariadne's "death" was his fault (God getting revenge for the whole apple business and the Savior business), b) Aziraphale will eventually leave him when he realizes it, and c) once that happens, there won't be much point in continued existence. (Not stating it outright, but the implication is there.)
> 
> Those thoughts might have continued to spiral, except Mephistopheles shows up, Crowley slams him into a wall and demands, "WHY?!" and you can start reading again at "'It’s—it’s n-not what you think!' Mephistopheles stammered."
> 
> I _think_ that covers the darkest, most potentially upsetting material. If you disagree, please let me know in the comments and I'll amend these notes. (And I apologize for not warning more clearly.)
> 
> And of course, please leave a comment if you're enjoying the fic and hit me up on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/) if you'd like to chat!


	20. Naked and Far from Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No mind-the-tags warning this time! Wahoo!

The rain was still coming down as Hera stood in Zeus’s office, staring out the window, trying to determine just where the meeting with Dionysus had gone wrong.

She couldn’t quite blame Zeus’s rant, much as she wished she could. It had been very well done – the sort of thing designed to get a younger Olympian quaking in their sandals and remembering Zeus’s frequent insistence that he was stronger than the rest of them combined.

Then again … perhaps she could blame that rant. Certainly Dionysus’s distraction had started in the midst of it, or perhaps before. Hera had not been surprised that he’d seized on Eris’s mischief in order to put off the inevitable, but …

He shouldn’t have still been focused on it after Zeus had left the room. Especially not when Hera all but handed him a way out of his current predicament on a silver platter.

There had to be something else there. Dionysus and Eris were not close, not like Eris and Ares were, or even Eris and Hades. Eris did enjoy rankling Dionysus and Ariadne, which was a sign of affection from her, but that affection did not necessarily go both ways.

It just didn’t make sense.

Hera continued to let that line of thought worry her. Because it was either fixate on Eris or fixate on the _other_ thing that might have caused Dionysus’s distraction and remarkable intransigence. That—that _feeling_ that had made its way through Zeus’s wards. A feeling Hera did not want to contemplate in too much detail, even though it seemed to affect Dionysus much differently than it had affected her. Because if Hera were to think about that feeling …

She might come to certain inescapable conclusions, like how that feeling felt far too much like _her_ handiwork, even though no one had heard from _her_ in centuries.

“Hera.”

Hera turned around.

Zeus stood before her, two wineglasses in hand, holding one of them out to her. “Have a drink.”

Hera sighed and took it. “You realize that nothing about this evening went according to plan?”

“Yes, but this was going to be a long-term plan. A few extra conversations are nothing in the grand scheme of things. As you’ve said …”

She smiled. “A sprint. Not a marathon.” Then she lifted her glass in a silent toast. “To our future grandchild?”

An amused light danced in Zeus’s eyes; he clinked glasses with her. “To our future grandchild.”

They drank. Or tried to. Hera was immediately reduced to coughing and sputtering; Zeus spat his wine clear across the room.

“What in Tartarus’s name was _that_?” Hera gasped.

“I’ve had vinegar that tasted better. What the—” Zeus stomped to the bottle, scowling at the label. Hera followed.

“Well, if I had to guess,” said a voice from the door, “I’d say it’s what happens when the God of Wine finds his girlfriend dead in an alley. Pretty sure none of the wine in a five-mile radius is going to be drinkable.”

Hera’s eyes widened, and she looked over her shoulder.

And instantly turned around. Because Eris, while exasperating, impossible and seemingly designed to dance upon Hera’s last nerve, was still her child. And there was no mother who would not turn around upon seeing their child stumble into the room looking like a drowned rat playing dress-up in a borrowed leather jacket, with eyes red-rimmed and face blotchy to boot.

“Eris,” Hera said, “darling, what’s wrong?”

Eris didn’t answer her. Didn’t even look at her. Stared at her father instead. “Why was Ariadne in an alley all by herself?”

Zeus narrowed his eyes as a few pieces began to come together in Hera’s head. “Eris—”

“You told Dionysus to come alone,” Eris said, taking three steps closer. Eris was tall by mortal standards – they all were – but Zeus still dwarfed her by a head. All the same, she seemed to look down on him. “And Ari, being Ari, said ‘fuck that, I’m coming with him.’ But she _wasn’t_ with him. She was in an alley. By _herself_. So she could get jumped by three demons and three angels and get stabbed. So answer the question, Father. _Why was Ariadne in an alley all by herself_?”

_Stabbed?_ The blood left Hera’s face. If—if that was true, then—

“Eris,” and here Zeus’s voice held the note of warning, “there are some things which are none of your—”

Eris threw her head back and laughed. Hera gasped. That laugh was not Eris’s usual pleased cackle or hearty chuckle. It was something older, something deeper, something that came right from the heart of the goddess Eris was. It was careless and powerful and feral.

And Eris seemed to be enjoying every second of it.

“You denied her _xenia,_ didn’t you, Father?” Eris asked.

Zeus blinked and blanched. “ _Xenia_ is for homes, not for places of business—”

“ _Bull_ shit!” Eris shouted, and that was closer to the everyday Eris Hera knew. She crossed over arms over her chest and glared up/down at her father _._ “You denied her shelter and she _died_! You once destroyed an entire town because they wouldn’t give you and messenger boy a meal! What the _fuck_ do you think is going to happen to you now?”

“You know not of what you speak—”

“Zeus, enough!” Hera snapped. She turned to Eris. “What do you mean, _died_? She can’t die, she’s—what happened to Ariadne?”

“I _told_ you,” Eris replied with a withering glance. “She got jumped by three angels and three demons and stabbed. Here.” She gestured to her armpit. “Do I need to explain to you what happens when you stab a mostly mortal body there, Mother? Or can I just throw on the last ten minutes of _Gladiator_ and let that tell you?”

Hera hiccupped, and the room spun so hard that she had to grope for the back of a chair to steady herself. Because if what Eris was saying was true – then—

She needed Ariadne _alive_ for this to work!

Eris watched her without pity before turning back to Zeus. “Did you hear the thunder earlier?”

“Believe it or not, some meteorological phenomena have perfectly natural causes.” Zeus’s words were nonchalant, but his eyes were wider than they ought to have been.

“Oh, sure,” Eris said, “except, you know, I’d bet that lightning that flashes when Dionysus first sees Ari’s body – and then thunder that goes off when he finally realizes what he’s seeing – isn’t one of those.”

The sound Zeus made as he sucked in air could have been another thunderclap.

“And he’s the youngest, isn’t he?” Eris grinned. There was something fey lurking behind her eyes, a sharp-toothed bite to the smile. “The youngest Olympian. You tried to set that up, didn’t you? You gave the last throne to the God of Wine and Orgies because you wanted to avoid going the way of Ouranos and Kronos.”

“ _Eris_ ,” Zeus growled, and—it should have sounded like thunder. It should have shaken the ground. It should have come with the crash of cymbals and the roll of drums.

It didn’t.

“Guess the joke’s on you though, isn’t it?” Eris went on. “Because you gave the last throne to the half-mortal one. And he got his ability to love from the moral half. He loves even though he might lose it. And now that he _has_ – and because _you_ denied the one he loved _xenia_ …”

Eris giggled. “This is going to be so much _fun_!”

The world shifted, spun sideways on its axis. Stars clicked into alignment; a prophecy took its first breath. And a vision streaked across Hera’s eyes: the Fates in their Underworld cave, Klotho spinning a golden thread shot through with strands of lightning-like silver, Lachesis measuring it out, and Atropos clicking her silver scissors as they inched closer and closer—

_NO!_ Hera thought, stumbled to the desk, and jabbed the intercom. “Hermes and Athena to Zeus’s office, _now_.”

She leaned against the desk, panting. And dared a glance at Zeus and Eris.

Neither had moved, and the air between them was still charged. Zeus’s hands were balled into fists at his sides. “Even if what you say is true, Dionysus could not defeat me – defeat _us_ – on his own. He’d need allies.”

“And you think he won’t have them?” Eris asked.

As if on cue, a brisk rat-a-tat-tat came from the door, followed by Hermes opening the door and sticking his head in. “You rang?” Athena was right behind him.

It had been Hera’s plan to lay out the situation as clearly and dispassionately as possible. But the best laid plans of any goddess were bound to go askew when Eris was in the room. “Ari’s dead. Murdered by her parents’ old coworkers because Father denied her _xenia_ ,” Eris said.

“ _What_?” gasped Athena, while Hermes shouted, “Dead? What do you mean, _dead_?”

“What one usually means by dead. Body got too banged up, so the soul peaced out,” Eris replied.

Athena threw both hands over her mouth, eyes wide, but Hermes’s eyes narrowed. “So where’s Ari’s soul?”

Hera gasped again, both hands clutching the desk to keep herself upright. Of course. Of _course_. Even if Ariadne’s body was beyond repair—if her soul was out there somewhere, that could be worked around. Bringing souls out of the Underworld and fitting them with new and even improved bodies was hardly without precedent – Dionysus had done it before!

Even as that hopeful vista opened before her, Eris dashed it. “Well, isn’t _that_ the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question?”

Zeus glared at Eris, but Hera may have been the only one to notice it. Hermes swore; Athena gasped again.

“Where’s Dionysus?” Hermes demanded.

“Alley that-a-way,” Eris pointed. “My bike is parked out front. Can’t miss it.”

Hermes nodded and turned on his heel. But before he could take a step, Zeus said, “And where do you think you’re going?”

Hermes whipped around. “Where the bloody fuck do you _think_ I’m going? _To take care of the kid!_ Same as I’ve been doing since the day he was born! Because someone has to, and Gaia knows it won’t be you!”

He didn’t wait for a response before darting away, leaving Athena alone in the doorway.

But not for long. “I—I’d best go with him. Make sure …” She shook her head and hurried off, calling, “Hermes! Wait for me!”

The door shut behind them.

Hera tried to catch her breath.

Eris didn’t give her the chance. “Looks like you just lost Hermes and Athena,” she said cheerfully to Zeus.

“Young lady—”

“Who do you really think you’re gonna be able to keep?” Eris asked. “The wonder twins, maybe, but between you and me? Given Apollo’s whole ‘prophecy’ deal, I don’t think he’s gonna stick around on a sinking ship, and Artemis will go wherever he goes. Ares will stick with me, and Aphrodite will stick with Ares. Hephaestus might stick with you … or he might decide to switch sides to the god who _didn’t_ throw him off Mount Olympus. Kinda hope he does, to be honest, it’ll be better than therapy for him. Now, you _might_ have had a prayer with Persephone and Hades, since the last thing Hades wants is another war … except, _whoops_! Persephone and Ari are _tight_ , so the best you’re going to get out of the Underworld is neutrality, and I wouldn’t bet more than a couple drachmas on that. So that means Demeter’s not going to be on your side, either. Aunt Hestia might want to be on your side, because family, but you broke _xenia_ and that’s kind of her thing, so you can kiss her and her baklava goodbye. That leaves Poseidon, who, yeah, is still sore over the whole Theseus debacle. Oh, and Mother.”

Eris smirked at Hera, then turned that smirk back onto Zeus. “Face it, Father. You’re fucked.”

“ _ERIS_!” Zeus bellowed.

It should have reduced Eris to a quivering wreck. She didn’t blink. “You can yell all you want. It’s not gonna save you.”

Zeus took a deep breath. The air crackled with static. And Hera – staring aghast between her husband and her child – realized that she might have to make a choice—

“Although if you listen to me and do exactly what I say,” Eris said, “I might save you.”

The static subsided. Zeus narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“Persephone isn’t the only one who likes Ari. And the thigh-baby.” Eris shrugged. “Like Hermes said – Ari’s soul has to be out there somewhere. And if we help Dionysus get it back, then he might decide he’s got better things to do than tear Olympus down to its foundations and bury you in the rubble. After all,” and here Eris’s smile turned sharp-toothed again, “isn’t that what he’s been deciding ever since he and Ari got together?”

Zeus snorted the question away. “So what do you want me to do?”

Eris laughed. But it wasn’t the careless laugh of earlier. This was her normal cackle – a sign that Eris was up to mischief and ready to cause problems on purpose, but nothing deeper than that.

“I thought you’d never ask,” she said. And told them.

* * *

Dionysus had no idea what they were going to do next.

He’d—taken care of Ariadne. He had to think of it like that, because if he thought about it any other way, what little control he had over his thoughts would snap. Persephone had walked him through it, had pointed out that Ariadne couldn’t cross the Styx without it. A little bit of dust, a couple of coins on her eyes, and that was … that.

He hadn’t been expecting Ari to just _disappear_ when he was done. And now he was trying hard to just breathe and not panic.

“Standard discorporation protocol,” Samael had said. “The protections against bacteria tend to wreak havoc on decomposition. So it’s better—”

“Would you just _shut up_?” Crowley had said, and honestly Dionysus had never been more grateful.

At least whatever happened to Ari hadn’t included her purse. That was good. Her phone was in there, and she’d be annoyed if she had to get a new phone and figure out how to recover data that had literally vanished into the ether.

He was holding onto her purse now. Part of him wanted to take her phone out and—what? Cling to it like it was the last bit of Ariadne he had, because—

_No._ He couldn’t go thinking like that. If he let himself think like that, he’d lose whatever threads of sanity he had left.

Despite how things looked, Ari wasn’t _dead_. Not really. Not in a way that counted. To hear the angels and the demons talk about it, this sort of thing happened all the time. They just had to find Ariadne and make sure she was safe, and then get a new body for her. Easy. Totally doable. Even Dionysus had done it before, with his mother.

_Except Semele used to be mortal, and that’s a completely different story, and we have no idea how or if we’ll get another “corporation” from the bastards in Heaven and Hell and_ —

“DIONYSUS!”

Dionysus looked up.

“ _Now_ what?” grumbled Samael, earning her glares from Aziraphale and Crowley and a wince from Mephistopheles. (Why were they still here? Samael and Mephistopheles. Aziraphale and Crowley weren’t likely to go anywhere until they figured this out, and if Dionysus was being honest with himself, he didn’t want them to.)

“DIONYSUS, WHERE—oh, thank Gaia.” That was Hermes, rounding the corner of the alley. He looked like he’d run all the way here from Mount Olympus, or maybe just Olympic Holdings.

Dionysus swallowed hard and let out a shaky breath.

Hermes looked him over once, twice, three times. He didn’t even glance at the other occupants of the alley. “You look like shit, kid.”

And Dionysus couldn’t help it. He laughed. It came out sounding more like a sob.

Quicker than thought, Hermes stepped into the alley, not just into the alley, up to Dionysus, sweeping his arms around him and holding on tight. “It’s ok. It’s ok.”

Dionysus shook his head. “Ari—”

“I know. Eris told us.”

_Us?_ Dionysus thought, and, _Eris?_ He supposed that answered one question, even if it raised a bunch of others—

“Just let it out,” Hermes said.

“I—” _I can’t,_ he wanted to say, _I have shit to do, we have to get her back, I don’t have time to fall apart right now—_

But then … a few lines streaked through his mind. The Scottish play, Act 4, Scene 3. Macduff having just learned that “all my pretty chickens and their dam / At one fell swoop” were cut down by Macbeth’s hired hands. And then Malcolm, useless as ever, insisting that Macduff “dispute it like a man.”

And Macduff – once again proving himself to be the only one in the play with two braincells to rub together – retorting, “I shall do so / But I must also feel it as a man!”

Dionysus was not a man. But he did need to feel it.

He threw his arms around Hermes and sobbed.

He had no idea how long he stood there. Time hadn’t been working properly since he left Olympic Holdings anyway. All he knew was that eventually the storm passed, as all storms had to, the sobs turned into hiccups, and Dionysus was able to breathe and think enough to pull back.

Hermes shot him a small sideways grin and absently brushed a few tears away, eyes flickering over Dionysus’s face. For a second Dionysus was just a kid again, hiding in the bushes after Hera drove his first foster-mothers mad, having no idea what would happen next but hoping against hope that his cool big brother would somehow be able to fix things.

“Ok, kid?” Hermes asked, just as he had then.

And just like he had then, Dionysus shook his head. “No. Not at all.”

“Yeah, I know.” Hermes ruffled his hair. “But it will be. Not now, maybe not for a while, but it will be.”

Dionysus swallowed and nodded. Because this – this wasn’t like when he was a kid. Back then he hadn’t been able to do anything to protect his foster-mothers from Hera’s wrath. Now? Now Ari was counting on him, and he’d be damned before he’d let her down.

“Dionysus?”

Dionysus jumped and looked around Hermes. “Athena?”

She smiled tightly; emotions were not Athena’s thing. “I—I talked to … everyone,” she gestured around the alley. “I—I think I understand what happened, so you needn’t go into it if you’d rather not. I just—I am very sorry.”

“Thanks,” Dionysus said, and meant it.

“And we’re gonna fix this,” Hermes said, slinging an arm over Dionysus’s shoulder. “Ok?”

Dionysus nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

“Good.” Hermes squeezed Dionysus a little closer. Then he glanced at Mephistopheles and Samael. “You two,” he snapped his fingers, “are you here to help, or do we have to take you out? And don’t try to lie; I’ll know.”

Perhaps to their credit, they did not try to lie. They exchanged the kind of speaking glances that only entities who had been friends for centuries or longer could manage. Mephistopheles was the first to speak. “We—we’re here to help.”

Hermes narrowed his eyes, nodded once, and turned to Samael. “Why?”

Samael sighed explosively and ran a hand over her face. Mephistopheles nudged her, and—held out his thumb? Which was on _fire_?

Samael saw it, grinned, and snapped a cigarette into her fingers. She lit it and took a long drag. When she breathed out, she turned back to Hermes.

“Do you have any idea how fucking miserable Heaven is?”

Aziraphale choked. Crowley’s eyebrows practically escaped into his hairline.

“Not firsthand, but I’ve met enough of your most holier-than-thou believers to not dispute the idea.” Hermes glanced sidelong at Dionysus and grinned. “Anyplace our brother Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery would want to go can’t be a place we’d much enjoy.”

Dionysus laughed, ignoring for the moment Athena’s shocked look and the sudden widening of Aziraphale’s eyes.

Samael, however, just nodded. “Right. Well, Heaven’s awful. Hell is …” She turned to Mephistopheles, one eyebrow raised.

“Worse,” he said, “but even I wouldn’t want to go back to Heaven just to escape it.”

“Right. Both sides are miserable enough that we were counting down the days to Armageddon because at least that’ll be a fucking _end_. And then _those two_ ,” she gestured at Aziraphale and Crowley with her cigarette, “had to go and ruin everything. Or so we thought.”

“Because we thought you’d gone native,” Mephistopheles did. “That you just … liked earth, and humans, so you saved them. And didn’t spare a thought for the rest of us.”

“And why the bloody Heaven _should_ we, you blithering—” Crowley started.

Samael glared at him, but if Dionysus knew Crowley half as well as he thought he did, that wasn’t what stopped the rant. It was Aziraphale’s hand on his arm that did that.

“But then we found the redhead. Ariadne.” Samael took another drag of her cigarette. “And realized that maybe …”

“Maybe there’s another way,” Mephistopheles said quietly.

“Because she shouldn’t exist.” Samael glared at Aziraphale and Crowley. “Never mind that the two of you should have been too busy trying to discorporate each other to get to the point where making her would even come up—”

“Archangel,” and now Aziraphale sounded almost as he had when he’d been threatening Mephistopheles, “shouldn’t she who is without sin cast the first stone?”

Samael shot a sideways glance at Mephistopheles, who smiled and shrugged. She smiled back. “All right, point. _My_ point is, though, that angels and demons, even if you can find a couple pairs that don’t want to kill each other on sight, shouldn’t be able to make—to make life. But you two did. Which means either you two are a lot more special than we gave you credit for, or we’ve been wrong about a lot of things.”

“We’ve definitely been wrong about a lot of things,” Mephistopheles said quietly. “We just don’t know what they are yet. And we’ll never find out if Ariadne is dead.”

“Hmmmm,” Hermes murmured. “That checks out to me. Athena?”

Athena started, drawn from a reverie that had involved a great deal of staring at Mephistopheles. “I—think what they’re saying makes a certain amount of sense, yes.”

“Then today is your lucky day,” Hermes said, “because if I believe you, and Athena believes you, then your odds of getting chained up in Tartarus next to Granddad just got a lot lower.”

Mephistopheles went white. Samael narrowed her eyes, took another drag of the cigarette, and breathed the smoke out forcefully through her nose, like a dragon.

Dionysus could sense the tension ratchetting up, and even as it settled between his shoulder blades, he ached to shrug it off and just be done with it all. The last thing he wanted to deal with was a tetchy archangel who clearly needed something a lot stronger than nicotine to take the edge off—

He was wrong about that.

Lightning split the sky just as the actual last thing he wanted to deal with appeared at the end of the alley.

Dionysus blinked, and his heart started to hammer. Apparently there were more things he had to feel as a man, because he found himself pushing Hermes’s arm off and marching down the alley, both hands balled into fists—

He didn’t even know what he planned to do with his hands until the thunder cracked – or maybe that was just the sound of his fist hitting Zeus’s jaw.

And Zeus – king of the gods and stronger than the rest of them combined, or so he claimed – stumbled back a full step.

“ _Dionysus_!” Hera gasped, and Eris cackled, and Athena and Hermes probably had some comments to make as well, but Dionysus wasn’t hearing any of it. Instead he stared at his father and raged.

“Would it have _fucking killed you_ to let her wait in the lobby?!”

Lightning flashed again.

And Zeus looked up.

He rubbed and worked his jaw experimentally, first open, then closed. Then he swallowed.

Then he spoke.

“No.”

The thunder rumbled, low and almost apologetic.

“If we had any idea that she’d be in danger, we never would have sent her out,” Hera said, hands out before her, grasping at Dionysus, as if she’d—as if she’d—

Dionysus wasn’t sure what she was planning to do, but he stumbled away from it, backwards into Hermes, who once again put an arm around his shoulders. “Hera. Leave the kid alone.”

Now Hera raised both hands in mute surrender. “I mean you no harm, Dionysus. And we meant _her_ no harm. I swear by the—”

“No! I don’t care. There’s no point. _You_ needed her alive.” Dionysus shook his head and turned to his father. “ _You_ swear.”

Zeus opened his mouth, even raised his right hand. But he didn’t get any farther than that.

“Tell him,” Eris said.

Dionysus and Zeus both turned to her in confusion. But Eris was only looking at Dionysus. “Tell him exactly what you want him to swear. Otherwise it won’t mean anything.”

Dionysus blinked, and—right. Right. Of course. Leave the wording to Zeus and he’d manage to swear something that was technically true and entirely meaningless. Dionysus swallowed hard and closed his eyes and tried to think.

“Swear,” he said finally, “that—that you didn’t mean her any harm. _Any_!” He swallowed again. “And swear that if you’d known that she’d be in danger, that you would have found a way to protect her.”

“And swear,” Eris added, “that since you fucked up so epically earlier this evening, you’ll do everything in your power to help fix things now.”

Zeus glared at her. Eris smiled sunnily back at him.

He sighed and rolled his eyes. But once again, he raised his right hand. His eyes began to glow. “I, Zeus, King of the Gods, do swear by the Styx that I meant Ariadne, lover of Dionysus, no harm. Furthermore, I swear by the Styx that had I known she was in danger, I would have protected her. And finally, I swear by the Styx that I will now lend my son Dionysus my aid as he restores Ariadne to her rightful place among gods and men.”

Styx’s power reached out from the Underworld, and Dionysus felt the binding. Zeus neither blinked nor flinched. Not even when a gale-force wind ripped through the alley, plastering their clothes to their bodies and sending Mephistopheles stumbling.

Only when it was gone did Zeus close his eyes, and when he opened them, the glow was gone.

“Does that satisfy you, son?” he asked.

“We’re here to help,” Hera added, and she didn’t reach out for him again – thank Gaia – simply slipped her arm through Zeus’s.

Dionysus glanced at Eris. She grinned at him and winked.

… He’d probably owe Eris a century’s worth of favors by the time this was done. But they’d be worth it, once he had Ariadne back.

Dionysus took a deep breath and looked up at Zeus. “We need to get to the Underworld. Persephone said they’d keep Ari safe if she’s down there.”

Zeus nodded. “Then to the Underworld we shall go.”

* * *

Wherever Ariadne was, it was dark. Warm, too, that perfect tropical beach, fall-asleep-and-wake-up-golden-brown warmth. There was softness and coolness underneath her, and around her, birds sang, a breeze whispered through leaves, and a brook babbled.

There was something deeply wrong about everything she could hear and feel, but Ariadne’s thoughts refused to cooperate for long enough for her to figure out just what it was.

She shifted and was rewarded with an all-over ache that was akin to a hangover, but at the same time, not at all like a hangover. Instinct took over, and she blinked her eyes open.

_Ow!_

There was light. There was lots of light, and it was all stabby.

Ariadne winced, brought one hand up to shield her eyes, and tried to sit up. Everything hurt more, but she kept going. It wasn’t unbearable; she just—for starters, she wished she could remember what she had been drinking or smoking or snorting or _whatever_ last night, so she knew to never, ever do it again. And she wished—

Ariadne blinked.

She’d been looking at the hand she was using to shield her eyes from the light, and it—Ariadne blinked again. Blinked a few more times, just to be sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing.

Why was her hand translucent?!

Ariadne brought her hand down and stared at it. It wasn’t fully translucent, just wavy and watery. And as she stared at it, it got worse.

Ariadne put her hand back on the ground in a hurry. And doing so, she got her first proper look around.

Where in Tartarus’s name was she?

It looked like – a park? A wilderness? Were there any true wildernesses left these days? It was grassy, with trees growing every few feet – not thick enough for a forest, not sparse enough for a plain or savannah. Improbably, three trees near her managed to be flowering and fruiting at the same time. And the same could be said of two of the bushes.

Even more improbably, there were three deer not five feet away: a stag, a doe, and a fawn. The fawn gazed at her curiously, its head tilted to one side. The parents didn’t pay her any mind at all.

And—Ariadne’s stomach lurched and she started to scoot backward. There – maybe ten feet back from the deer – was a lion. Freaking Mufasa come to life. Except it wasn’t looking at her, it was looking at—

That was a lamb.

And the lion was giving it a bath?!?

“The _fuck_?!” Ariadne heard herself say, and that was probably a huge mistake, because that would alert the lion she was there, and she really didn’t want to have to find out whether she could fly when she felt like—

“Mmmrrph?”

Ariadne froze.

She knew that voice. That vague questioning lilt. And the timbre too – the sound that bovine-style vocal cords would make if they only had human-sized lungs powering them. It had been nearly thirty-eight hundred years since she’d last heard it, but she’d know it anywhere.

It was coming from behind her.

But it _couldn’t_ be who she was thinking.

Slowly, Ariadne turned around.

Her breath hitched.

And her voice, cracked, broken, a little teary, asked without getting permission from her brain, “… Asterion?”

The half-man, half-bull behind her didn’t smile. His mouth had never worked that way. But he clapped his (large, man-like) hands, he huffed, and he wiggled in a way that suggested if he hadn’t been kneeling that he would have been pawing at the ground.

And his ears. His ears flapped!

That was what told Ariadne that this was Asterion – because even if there had been other half-men, half-bulls wandering around, with Asterion’s exact reddish fur and the same white blaze over the left eye, none of them would have flapped their ears when Ariadne said Asterion’s name.

“ _Asterion_!”

It was half a sob, half a shout, and Ariadne didn’t care. She stumbled to her feet and forgot that Asterion could be shy about sudden movements and didn’t like to be touched, especially after he’d been locked in the labyrinth. Because in that moment, all she saw was her brother.

And Asterion threw his arms out wide, and Ariadne launched herself into them, and Asterion caught her and held her tight, and Ariadne wrapped her arms around his neck and sobbed into his shoulder. “Asterion! You’re ok, you’re ok …”

She didn’t know how long she might have repeated those two words like a mantra, except Asterion had something to say.

“… Mmmrph?”

Confusion. Ariadne leaned back to see Asterion looking down at her, fixing her with one eye and tilting his head to one side.

“Asterion?” Ariadne asked, voice very small and frightened, because clearly she’d gone wrong somewhere and—

“He doesn’t speak English,” said a voice from over Ariadne’s shoulder. “He knows his name, but he can’t understand anything else you’re saying to him.”

The voice wasn’t speaking English. It was speaking Greek, Minoan Greek. And clearly Asterion understood it, because he nodded and patted Ariadne’s head – his favored way of showing affection, because that was how he most liked to receive it.

Ariadne understood it too, because no matter how many centuries had passed since she’d spoken it aloud, she couldn’t very well forget her own mother tongue.

She leaned back, wondering if she dared to turn around. Wondering what she’d find, because she hadn’t recognized that voice.

But what choice did she have? She turned.

If the voice had come from the only human-like entity she could see, then it belonged to the blond woman with short, curly hair sitting on a rock about ten feet off. She looked to be in late middle age, with smile lines crinkling around her eyes and her lips. She had large dimples, which Ariadne knew because she was smiling.

“Hello, Ariadne,” she said, still in Minoan. “How are you feeling?”

How was she _feeling_? Out of all the questions this mysterious smiling woman could ask, that was the one? Why would she—

A great deal of memory chose that moment to come rushing back to her. Getting kicked out of Olympic Holdings. The alley. Three angels and three demons surrounding her. And the bitchy one, Samael, carrying her up in the air and twisting her neck—

“Oh, fuck,[1]” Ariadne gasped. Asterion made a noise that was his equivalent of a gasp. “I’m dead, aren’t I?”

“No, not at all.” The woman smiled at her. “Just discorporated.”

“Discorporated” was in English. She looked up at Asterion, who looked as confused as she felt.

“And …” Ariadne swallowed. “What does ‘discorporated’ mean?”

The woman blinked. “Oh—of course. You wouldn’t know unless your fathers told you, would you?”

“My fath—”

The woman waved her hand as if Ariadne’s stuttering panic meant nothing. “Yes, yes, I know all about them. And don’t worry, I’m not here to harm you or them. Now as for your question …” The woman flopped back on her rock, hands under her head and staring at the sky. “Think of it as being something like an out-of-body experience with a dash of only mostly dead.”

“As in, ‘mostly dead is slightly alive’?” Ariadne asked.

“Oh, I do love that movie. Between you, me, and Asterion, it’s some of your and Dionysus’s best work.” The woman sat up on her elbows, grinning even as Ariadne’s mind began to shout unhelpful things like _what the fuck_ and _run_ and _Somebody, Anybody, help me!_ “Now, to answer your question – well, in your case it’s a lot more than slightly alive. The corporation is … a tool, really. Something like a hazmat suit that angels and demons put on when having to deal with humans.”

Ariadne rubbed her temples and told herself now was not the time to panic. “When you say corporation—”

“Body,” the woman filled in.

“Right. And that is—”

“Very much dead. Samael took care of that quite thoroughly, bless her.”

_Great. Just great._ “So—how is that functionally different from _me_ being dead?”

“Well, when a human or … human-adjacent person,” the woman gestured to Asterion, who flapped his ears, “is dead, then that’s usually it for them. The soul goes on to the afterlife and there they stay. Or they move on to the next life, if that’s where their faith leads them. The point is, the soul won’t be returning to that life again. Oh, there _are_ exceptions,” the woman went on, “but those are few and far between and need quite a bit of divine oomph behind them, if you know what I mean.”

Ariadne wasn’t sure what this said about her, but she rather did think she knew what the woman meant.

“Whereas with discorporation … well, if your hazmat suit gets too banged up to be used again, you just go and get a new one.”

“A new body?” Ariadne asked.

“Corporation, technically, but yes, a new body.”

Ariadne blinked. She again looked up at Asterion, wondering if he understood this any better than she did.

He grunted and patted her head.

Ariadne closed her eyes, took a deep breath, opened them, and looked back at the woman. She had dozens of questions she could ask, but decided to limit herself to the simplest and most important one.

“ _How_?”

“Ah! That _is_ the question!” the woman said, kicking her heels and sitting up in a motion far too fluid for a body as old as that one looked. “Come on. Walk with me. We have much to discuss.”

_Walk with—_ Ariadne thought, but she felt herself getting up, heard Asterion get up behind her and put a steadying hand on her shoulder. She opened her mouth—

The woman was walking away.

“ _Wait_!”

If they had been on Earth, Ariadne’s shout would have made every bird in the trees nearby take flight. The deer would have run away, and the lion—Ariadne didn’t want to think about the lion.[2] As it was, the stag and fawn barely flicked their ears; the doe shot her a look that seemed to say, _How rude!_ ; the lion kept bathing the lamb; and the birds didn’t even notice.

Meanwhile, the woman stopped, turned around, and raised an eyebrow, as if Ariadne had simply politely requested that she slow down instead of shouting it. “Yes?”

Once again, Ariadne had questions. Too many questions. She focused on the simple ones first. “Who—who are you? And where are we?”

The woman smirked. “To answer your first question, _ehyeh asher ehyeh_ – though you can call me …” The woman tilted her head back, surveying the sky and the birds as if they held the answer to her question. “Eloise! That’ll do. And to answer your second …”

Eloise smiled and spread her hands. “Welcome to Eden.” 

* * *

[1] Or rather, the Minoan equivalent.

[2] The lamb didn’t enter into her thinking, because the lamb would have already been lunch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I both expect and encourage Googling of any non-English words or phrases I may happen to use in this fic. You have been warned.
> 
> As usual, thanks for reading, comments give me LIFE, and hit me up on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/) if you'd like to chat!


	21. Gonna Take on the World Someday

Ariadne was not in the Underworld.

“The Styx shores are not as crowded as they once were,” Hades told them, not unkindly, shortly after they arrived. “And even if they were, Ariadne would be rather conspicuous. If she’d ended up there, we would have found her.”

To say that had not been what any of them had wanted to hear would be a massive understatement. And it doubtless would have led to several rounds of fruitless argument, except that one of them (Athena) had the wisdom to nip that in the bud.

“Then if she is not here, if she is not in Hell, and she is not in Heaven, we ought to seek wisdom from someone who can see beyond the borders of what is commonly known. I propose that we consult the Fates,” Athena said.

“Why?” Dionysus asked. “Ari’s already tried talking to them. They couldn’t help her find …” He gestured vaguely at Aziraphale and Crowley. “Said something about—”

“The thread of her fate was not theirs to spin, yes, I know,” Athena said, causing Dionysus to give her a hard look. “But that was a different question.”

Athena looked ready to go on, but Eris interrupted. “And there’s nobody more gossipy than prophetic gods and goddesses. Even if they don’t know where to find her, they probably know who does.”

Zeus gave Eris a speculative, distrusting look. “How do you know that?”

“Well, first of all, have you met Apollo? About yea high, blond, has a twin sister he is, shall we say, disturbingly close to?” Eris answered, one eyebrow raised. “Second – and more importantly – I talk to people. People outside the family, even. Us pain-in-the-ass divinities have to stick together.”

Zeus seemed ready to argue further, but Hermes was having none of it. “Well, I’m sold. If Athena and Eris actually agree on your next step, you’re pretty dumb to do anything else.”

Hermes’s point carried the day. They would consult the Fates.

* * *

The Fates lived in a cave only a short walk from the city where Hades, Persephone and the other deities of the Underworld lived. At any other time, Aziraphale would have been goggling all around, taking everything in. Consorting with other pantheons had definitely been above his (proverbial) paygrade, back when he’d been on Heaven’s (proverbial) payroll, but he’d been in the human world so long that he’d heard all the tales, and to have the chance to compare what the humans had created with reality—at any other time, it would have been manna from Heaven.

Now, it was all he could do to hold tightly to Crowley’s hand – or was he allowing Crowley to hold tightly to his? – and hope with everything he had that the Fates could tell them how to find Ariadne and bring her home again.

They had barely stepped up to the cave when an eldritch voice called from within, “Enter, questioners, for here you will find answers.”

Crowley had gone quite still at that, and Aziraphale gave his hand a squeeze that was meant to be reassuring. Crowley squeezed back hard enough to have given Aziraphale’s hand some pain, had he had any ability to pay attention to such things.

They went in, all twelve of them – Hades and Persephone, Dionysus with Hermes at his elbow, Aziraphale and Crowley, Athena and Eris, Zeus and Hera, and finally Samael and Mephistopheles bringing up the rear.[1] Hades was the first to speak, once they were all inside. “Venerable Ones,” he said, inclining his head. “We come—”

“We know what you seek, Sons and Daughter of Kronos, Sons and Daughters of Zeus, Sons and Daughter of She Who Is That She Is,” said one of the – Aziraphale would call them women; they were all female-shaped and quite ancient. This one must have been Klotho, since she carried a spindle and focused nearly all her attention on the thread she was spinning between her fingers.

“We know that you wish to return to the mortal world the One who was Lost and then Found and Lost Again,” said the second woman – Lachesis, who held the thread her sister had spun and measured it in her hands.

“We know this, for we know all,” said the third sister, who had to be Atropos, cutting the thread Lachesis had measured with her silver scissors.

Looking at the scissors glinting in the low lamplight and knowing what they meant, Aziraphale tried not to shudder.

Hades took a deep breath, the sort one would take while gathering one’s patience. Persephone put a hand on the small of his back. “Yes. Of course. You’ve mentioned. May we—”

“We will speak to the lover of the Lost One,” said Klotho, “the God of Wine and Revelry, Son of Gods and Mortals, Wild One—”

“Where’s Ariadne?” Dionysus interrupted.

Aziraphale winced; someone gasped; and Hades smacked his forehead.

“Kid,” Hermes said reprovingly.

Dionysus simply raised his eyebrow at the three women.

Lachesis answered, never taking her eyes from the thread she measured in her hands. “That, we cannot tell you.”

Dionysus took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders, sending power rippling through the cave. Aziraphale gulped. The power wasn’t _quite_ what Dionysus had unleashed when Zeus had come to the alley, but it was close. Worryingly close.

“Our responses are limited,” said Atropos with a snip of the silver scissors. “You must ask the right questions.”

Something in that reply made Dionysus startle and snap to attention. “The right questions.”

“Perhaps—” Athena began.

Dionysus waved a hand at her. “Do you know where Ariadne is?”

“That is not the right question,” Klotho said.

“And is that what you truly wish to know, Roaring One?” Lachesis added.

Dionysus’s eyes narrowed, and he frowned. “How do we get Ariadne back?”

“Ah,” said Atropos, and perhaps Aziraphale was hallucinating, but he thought – he truly thought – that he saw her smile. “ _That_ is the right question.”

Then, carefully, she put her scissors on a nearby table. Klotho did the same with her spindle. And Lachesis set her thread to the side.

The three of them stood and moved to the center of the room in eerie unison.

There was no logical reason why such simple actions should be so weighed down by meaning, except, of course, for the magical power building around them – something like the change in air pressure when flying, the type that made the ears of one’s corporation start to hurt, except no amount of yawning or swallowing would relieve the building pressure, and one’s ears felt rather less likely to pop than to explode.

Aziraphale wasn’t quite certain how it happened, but as the pressure built he and Crowley inched closer until they were standing shoulder-to-shoulder. And they were not alone. Hera and Zeus; Hades and Persephone; Athena, Hermes, and Eris – even Samael and Mephistopheles – all had moved closer together.

Only Dionysus remained alone, arms crossed over his chest, gaze not moving from the three sisters in front of him.

The three of them came together, hands up, fingertips just brushing. Then they moved apart, a glittering web of power spun between them. The power-web hung still in the space they made.

And in the web, three ghostly images appeared: a sword, a crown, and a set of scales.

Aziraphale’s stomach plunged. _Oh, no …_

“These are the three harbingers of Armageddon. The Sword of War,” said Klotho.

“The Scales of Famine,” added Lachesis.

“And the Crown of Pollution,” said Atropos.

“To put these objects in the hands of their Horsemen would be to start Armageddon over again,” Klotho said.

“And should that happen, there is no force, mortal or immortal, that could halt its progress,” Lachesis said.

“The world, as we know it, would end,” Atropos said.

“And make no mistake – there is a thread of Fate in which Heaven and Hell learn from their mistakes, devise a stronger strategem, and send these objects back out into the world, into the hands of their waiting Horsemen,” said Klotho.

Crowley groaned. “We never should have given the bloody things back to the deliveryman.”

“Well, we couldn’t have very well kept them,” Aziraphale said.

“Quite.” More than one person seemed to start when Samael spoke. She simply raised an eyebrow at them. “Holy Water and Hellfire are a cakewalk compared to what we would have done to you if you’d tried keeping them.”

If anyone other than Samael had said that, Aziraphale would have replied, very gently, that the statement was not as reassuring as the speaker had intended it to be. Since it was Samael who had said that, Aziraphale assumed it was exactly as reassuring as she had intended to be and kept his mouth shut.

“Anyway. You were saying?” Samael asked, turning back to the Fates.

Lachesis smiled. It was—well. If Aziraphale slept, and if angels could dream, it was the type of smile that would have given him nightmares. “Yours is a stiff-necked people, and you know this well, Archangel of Destruction. But the tapestry of Time has many threads. It is not necessary that this particular future come to pass.”

“The Scales of Famine and the Crown of Pollution must be removed from their resting places and brought to the Underworld. This is the Fates’ decree,” Atropos said.

“I’m sorry, you want these highly dangerous, potentially world-ending objects brought _where_?” Hades asked.

“And—and,” Aziraphale stammered, “what about the sword?”[2]

The sword flickered, faded, and finally vanished from the power-web.

“The Sword of War is not your concern,” said Klotho. “A different strand of Fate will lead it to its destiny.”

“And though the scales and crown must be brought here, it is not the Fates’ decree that they remain here,” Lachesis said to Hades. “Their destiny will be revealed in time.”

Hades did not appear mollified by that statement. Next to him, Persephone’s nostrils flared, and she took what could only be called a deep, calming breath.

“As for the Lost One,” Atropos said, turning a gimlet eye to Dionysus, as if she could read his thoughts – which Aziraphale would not necessarily put past her, “she will not be Found until both of these objects cross the Styx shore and rest side-by-side in this very cave.”

Dionysus took a deep breath, staring at the power-web and the images of the scales and crown, and expelled it forcefully. “Right. So. Get the scales, get the crown, get Ariadne back. Fine. Easy.” He looked up. “So where do we find them?”

In unison, the sisters let their hands fall. The power-web disappeared, and with it, the images. “It is not our place to tell you that,” Klotho said.

“The knowledge and tools you need to succeed can already be found among your party,” Lachesis added.

“You simply must make use of them,” Atropos concluded.

And with that, the three sat down again. Klotho picked up her spindle, Lachesis her thread, and Atropos her scissors as if their guests had already left.

Dionysus still stood alone, though now his hands had balled into fists and trembled at his side. Hermes took a step forward and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Kid—”

Dionysus turned—to Aziraphale and Crowley. “They said we already know what we need to know to succeed. So—do you? Do you know where we can find these things?”

Aziraphale felt the blood drain out of his face and glanced at Crowley to find that he looked rather the same as Aziraphale felt. “Hell—this sort of thing is only shared on a need-to-know basis in Hell, and …” Crowley started.

“And all Gabriel would say was that it wasn’t his department,” Aziraphale fretted.

“Well, obviously,” said Samael.

Dionysus, Crowley, and Aziraphale – and for that matter, everyone else in the cave who wasn’t one of the Fates – stared at her.

Her hands were shoved in her pockets, and she rested on her heels in the sort of faux-casual stance that a trained warrior could turn into a kick, punch, or stab in the space of an eyeblink. Aziraphale resolved not to blink. “It was my department, not Gabriel’s.”

“So you know where we can find the crown and the scales?” Dionysus said.

“Sure. The crown is in Heaven, in the Reliquary,” said Samael. “The scales – well, I know they’re in Hell, but I’m not sure where—”

“The Bins,” Mephistopheles breathed. He started when all the gazes that had been trained on Samael turned to him. “It’s where everything important ends up. I mean, if it’s not a file …”

“Right,” Crowley said, nodding, and Aziraphale – he’d have to put his faith in that. It wasn’t the same as certain knowledge, but he would take what he could get.

“Ok, so, great,” Hermes said, sighing and running a hand through his hair. “We need to get a crown out of Heaven, a set of scales out of Hell, and … there’s absolutely no way we can all sneak in either of those places. Five Olympians, a realm-king and -queen, and Eris—no matter how much we try to mask ourselves, that’s going to light up every alarm they have, and that’s assuming we can smuggle the angels and demons past whatever anti-angelic/demonic defenses they have—”

“And to attack in numbers large enough to make a frontal assault feasible would simply bring about Armageddon by slightly different means,” Athena said.

“Unless, of course, we win,” Zeus pointed out.

“We wouldn’t,” said Hermes.

“That is hardly written in—”

“Are you all really that stupid?” Eris interrupted. “Or has it just been so fucking long since any of us had a real quest to run that you’ve forgotten how it works?”

Zeus, Athena, and Hermes all turned to her with raised eyebrows. But Hera was the one who spoke. “Your point, dear?”

“Medusa’s head,” Eris said. “The Erymanthian Boar. The Cretan Bull. The Mares of Diomedes. The—”

“You seem rather fixated on some of your brothers’ deeds,” Hera interrupted, one hand on her hip and glaring.

Eris glared back. “The _Golden Fleece_.”

Now Hera’s eyes widened.

“When we need something, do we get our hands dirty and fetch it ourselves? Of course not. Not when there are willing mortals – or the next best thing – and—”

“Tabletop,” Athena breathed. Her face lit up. “Oh, it’s been so long since we played proper tabletop! With actual heroes and monsters!”

“See, this one gets it.” Eris gestured to Athena. “Now come on, let’s head back to my place. I’ve got the perfect setup for it.”

* * *

Despite what he had claimed in several reports he’d sent down to Hell in the 1980s, Crowley had not been responsible for either Dungeons & Dragons or the various Satanic panics that had accompanied it. But he knew about it. He knew what the boards and maps looked like, what kinds of figurines the players might choose. He considered himself a minor expert on the matter of dice. After all, the devil was in the details, and he bloody well needed the details to write a convincing report.[3] So, all in all, Crowley certainly recognized what a good setup for Dungeons & Dragons or another tabletop game looked like.

And Eris had a very, very good setup. It wasn’t just a matter of ample snacks or comfy chairs – speaking of which, Eris had splurged on gaming-style chairs, the types with sinfully comfortable cushioning and built-in cupholders. It was the ample stock of writing implements of just about every kind – from wax tablets and styli to spiral-bound notebooks and pens to handheld tablets of the electronic type. It was the entire wall of dice to choose from. It was the gameboard itself, wrought in flickering godly magic, three-dimensional and beautifully intricate.

While Crowley found the fact that the gameboard currently showed an eerily accurate birds-eye view of Hell somewhat disquieting, he decided that wasn’t his problem to worry about. Hell could look after itself. He was frankly more curious about the bank of televisions on the wall opposite the dice.

Zeus, however, had different priorities.

“You did _what_?!”

“It wasn’t just me; it was Loki and me,” Eris said, not for the first time. “And it kept us occupied for the whole seventeenth century. I didn’t hear you complaining at the time.”

“If the Abrahamics had realized that you were sneaking into their strongholds and mapping them out – for a _game_ ,” Zeus said, “do you have any idea what they would have done?”

Eris raised an eyebrow. “Why do you think it took us a whole fucking century? We were making certain we didn’t get caught! Besides, we didn’t just map the places out …”

Eris waved her hand at the bank of televisions, which lit up in unison. On each screen was a different part of Hell from a different angle.

Eris waved her hand again, and the views on the screens switched from Hell to Heaven.

“We made sure we’d know what was going on when they changed things up. You’re welcome.” Eris flopped into the largest, most cushioned chair at the table and grabbed one of the electronic tablets. “Now, are we playing? Or are we yelling at me for things I did centuries ago that are coming in super handy now, which, again, _you’re welcome_?”

Zeus took a deep breath and let it out again, like a bull getting ready to charge.

“Father,” Athena said. She put a hand lightly on his elbow. “Though I cannot condone Eris’s foolhardiness in seeking this information in the first place, she managed to do it with impunity, and she’s given us a great gift. One that may yet be even more useful, should Hell and Heaven prove …” Athena cast a glance over her shoulder, one part calculating, one part guilty, as her gaze swept over Crowley, Aziraphale, Samael, and Mephistopheles.

“Bigger arseholes than usual?” Crowley asked. “And don’t give me that look, angel, they did their damnedest to kill us both, and—”

He choked, unable to finish the sentence. Aziraphale heard its logical conclusion anyway and winced.

“It’s all right, dear boy,” he said, giving Crowley’s hand a squeeze. “We’re going to get her back.”

And with that, Aziraphale swallowed and turned back to the gods, something like steel flashing in his normally mild blue eyes. “Right. So, how does this work?”

“Well, first, we all pick a hero to sponsor. And I pick Crowley,” Eris said.

Crowley started, not sure whether to be surprised, flattered, or terrified.

“Campaign master doesn’t get a hero,” Hermes said.

“There’s only a campaign master when the quest is running on Earth,” Eris replied. “Unless, of course, one of you has the ability to alter reality in Heaven or Hell – in which case, have at it, because Loki and I couldn’t quite figure _that_ shit out.”

“Persephone and I can be campaign masters, if needed,” Hades said.

Every single god, angel, and demon – except Persephone – stared at him.

Hades simply smiled. “Mortals have long conflated the Underworld with Heaven and Hell. We do not rule there as we do here …”

“But we have influence. Hopefully it will be enough,” said Persephone. She grabbed a notepad, took a chair and snapped her fingers. A paper screen appeared before her and the notepad she’d placed on the table.

Hades took up a wax tablet and stylus and sat next to her, angling his tablet behind the screen.

“Right,” Hera said. “In that case, I shall sponsor Aziraphale.”

“I—beg your pardon?” Aziraphale stuttered.

“Thank me for the honor later,” Hera said, waving a dismissive hand at him and slipping into one of the seats next to Eris as if it were a throne.

Zeus glanced at Dionysus. “Son, I think it is only fair that you choose next—or if you wish to sponsor Crowley or Aziraphale, I’m sure—”

“Sponsor?” Dionysus asked. “I’m not sponsoring anyone. I’m _going_.”

“Is that so?” Zeus asked, a light catching in his eyes. “In that case—”

“And you’re out of your damn mind,” Dionysus went on, “if you think for one minute that I need—”

“Anyone other than your favorite brother to sponsor you, thank you,” Hermes said, collapsing into the chair on Eris’s other side and snapping a tablet – an electronic one – into his fingers. “Or rather, you, Dionysus, can thank me, Hermes, later.”

There was a moment of tossed glares, bunched fists, and raised eyebrows – the sort of silent fraternal disagreement that nevertheless managed to speak volumes. But when Dionysus sighed and let his head fall, Hermes grinned. “All right,” Dionysus said. “Hermes, then.”

“And I shall sponsor Mephistopheles,” Athena said, perhaps trying to stave off a second round of argument, this one between Zeus and Hermes. Or perhaps just trying to claim her favorite hero before he got snatched up, to judge by the smile she tossed Mephistopheles’s way.

He didn’t seem to know what to do with the sponsorship or the smile. “M-me, ma’am?” he stammered, blinking.

“But of course,” Athena said, sitting on Hermes’s other side. She took a wax tablet and almost immediately began writing on it. “Who else?”

Samael caught Mephistopheles by the elbow before he could do anything too embarrassing with that news. Then she glanced at Zeus with the sort of arch, glittering smile that could mask a great deal – and where, Crowley wondered, had an archangel learned to smile like _that_? “It appears we’re stuck with each other, Your Majesty.”

Zeus raised an eyebrow … and smiled. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” He sat next to Hera and drew a notebook closer to himself. “I daresay your stats are quite strong for a hero of your …” He cast a long, calculating look over Crowley, Aziraphale, and Mephistopheles. “Species, shall we say?”

Samael shrugged, hands plunged in her pockets, and nodded.

“Well, now that that’s out of the way,” Persephone said, “traditional next order of business would be gifts.”

“Gifts?” Aziraphale asked.

“It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this,” Eris said, which made Hermes snicker.

“I—what?” Aziraphale asked.

“The sponsors typically give their heroes gifts – weapons and other tools – to help them along the quest,” Athena explained.

If Crowley had been seated at the table, he would have had a moment of panic – because, well, when he’d started the evening, he certainly hadn’t expected an improvised godly D&D campaign to be part of it, and that sort of thing took some preparation, didn’t it? Certainly no one could pull the sort of quest-easing gifts were supposed to hand out directly from their bottoms.

Except, clearly, this bunch could, because almost immediately Zeus held out his hand, and with a crack of thunder that made Hades glare at him, a spear appeared in it. Or something like a spear. The shaft looked perfectly normal, but instead of being tipped with a typical spear-point, it had a stylized lightning bolt.

“Thunder-spear,” Zeus said, holding it out so Samael could take it. Which she did, hefting it experimentally and passing it from hand to hand. “Throw it, but don’t let go, and you’ll throw small lightning bolts. Now, twist your wrist—yes, that’s it—”

Samael flicked her wrist, and the spear transformed into a sword about the same size and shape as Aziraphale’s flaming sword – except this sword had crackles of lightning dancing up and down the blade, not flames. Samael’s face lit up. “Oh, I like this.”

That was only mildly terrifying.

“Good,” Zeus said, grinning. “Now press the button on the pommel.”

Samael did so, and the sword snapped into a small metal tube easily fit into a pocket.[4] Samael smirked and dropped the tube into the pocket of her trench coat.

“Thanks,” she said, nodding and stepping back.

“Mephistopheles,” said Athena. He nervously stepped forward. Athena waved her hand, and a simple knapsack appeared in it. “This should be sufficient to carry the items you seek. Once you put something in it, it will only be able to be retrieved by you, and it will come to your hands the moment you seek it.”

Mephistopheles took the knapsack and looked it over. Dionysus, however, had narrowed his eyes. “Isn’t that the same one you gave Perseus?”

“Wasn’t Perseus the one who chopped off the snaky-haired lady’s head?” Crowley asked Aziraphale.

Mephistopheles, who had been halfway into opening the bag, froze.

“The head of Medusa has long since found a new home; you need not fear being turned to stone,” Athena said.

“But can the head turn angels and demons to stone?” Samael asked. “Because that could be useful.”

“Would rather not find that out the hard way, thanks,” Mephistopheles mumbled.

“And you wondered why I sponsored you,” Athena said.

Mephistopheles looked up, rubbed the back of his neck, and looked down again. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“You are most welcome.” Athena said with a nod. She then raised an eyebrow at Hermes.

Hermes shook his head minutely.

Hera took that as her cue. “Aziraphale,” she said.

Crowley felt Aziraphale stiffen and stroked his knuckles with his thumb. “Your Majesty?”

Hera waved her hand. Before Aziraphale appeared a model of a small metal boat. “The _New Argo_ ,” she said, smiling. “At full size, capable of sailing on any element – air, earth, fire, or, yes, water – or any surface derived from one of those elements. And of protecting its occupants from the hazards of that surface. It will take you where you need to go.”

Aziraphale did not answer immediately, instead staring hard at the gameboard. Then he nodded to Hera. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” he said, and slipped the boat into his pocket.

“Crowley,” Eris said. She was grinning. Crowley glanced at his companions and saw that all of them – even Mephistopheles and Samael – looked more than a bit ill at ease.

He grinned. “Yes, Eris?”

Eris giggled and snapped her fingers. “Behold – the Wabbajack!”

What appeared in her hand was a carved wooden staff topped with the head of a man-like being, its mouth opened in a shout or scream. Crowley stepped forward, took it, and held it experimentally.

“Oh good Gaia,” Hermes groaned. “Seriously? A Wabbajack?”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Aziraphale asked, examining the staff from over Crowley’s shoulder. Crowley held it out so he could get a better look.

Eris pouted. “You … don’t know what this is, do you?”

Crowley cringed and shrugged. “Sssorry?”

“So then a demonstration is in order.” Eris snapped her fingers, and a Greek-style helmet appeared on the floor. “Wave the Wabbajack at the helmet.”

Crowley did, and—oh, he felt that, a wave of power that wasn’t at all like Hell’s power but that slipped through his fingers like the balm of Gilead.

The helmet turned into a chicken.

“A _chicken_?” Samael demanded.

“Wait for it,” Eris said. She waved her hand and a plexiglass enclosure appeared around the chicken.

“Eris,” said Hera, already edging her chair back, “why did you—”

She didn’t get a chance to finish that sentence, because the chicken exploded. Crowley stumbled back – or maybe he was dragged back by Aziraphale—

The explosion didn’t reach beyond the plexiglass. And in the center of the enclosure sat a Greek helmet.

“You,” Dionysus stammered, “you gave him a staff that will turn things into exploding chickens that then transform back?”

“No,” Eris said. “I gave him a Wabbajack.”

“Which does the exploding chicken thing, and also casts fireballs, thunderbolts, ice spikes, drain stamina, transforms enemies into cheese, and can cause explosions if you’re facing something like a dragon or a mammoth … oh, and sometimes it makes your target stronger, can’t forget that,” said Hermes. He turned to Eris. “What am I forgetting?”

“Lots!” Eris grinned. “Best way to see what it can do is to use it.”

“But,” Aziraphale stammered, “but how do you control it?”

“You don’t!” said Eris. “That’s the fun!”

Aziraphale’s corporation went a few shades paler than normal, but Crowley was tossing the Wabbajack from hand to hand and eventually into the air. “Can I keep this?” he asked. “You know, assuming we survive and all.”

“Only if you promise to let me take you on a playthrough of Skyrim,” Eris replied.

“Deal,” Crowley said, snapping his fingers and opening a small pocket dimension. He slipped the Wabbajack in there, easily accessible when he needed it next.

“Oh good _Lord_ ,” Aziraphale sighed.

That left only one god – or one pair of gods, technically. Dionysus glanced at Hermes, who smiled faintly. Then Hermes waved his hand.

Nothing seemed to happen at first – at least until Dionysus looked at his feet and pulled up his jean legs. The shoes he’d been wearing had transformed into sandals.

With wings on them.

“ _Seriously_?” Dionysus asked.

“You’re traveling with four people with wings, kid, you have to keep up somehow,” Hermes replied, smirking. “And it’s not like I’m giving you smelly old gym sneakers; these things are brand spanking new.”

“This is _exactly_ what you gave to Perseus,” Dionysus pointed out.

Hermes shrugged. “Well, what can I say except you’re welcome?”

Except he didn’t say it. He sang it.

Dionysus raised an eyebrow.

“There’s no need to pray, it’s ok – you’re welcome!” Hermes went on.

Now Dionysus glared. Or tried to. One corner of his lips twitched suspiciously upward.

“Well, come to think of it …” Hermes leaned back, hands behind his head—and just as swiftly sat back up. “Kid, I could go on and on—I could explain every natural phenomenon—the tide, the grass, the ground—oh, that was just—”

Dionysus broke, snickering and ducking his head.

“ _There_ we go!” Hermes leaned back again. “I was afraid I’d have to do the whole rap.”

“Which you have memorized,” Dionysus said.

“But of course. You have any idea how funny it is to respond to mortals with ‘what can I say except you’re welcome’ when you do something nice for them?”

“You’re not a demigod though,” Dionysus replied.

“Semantics,” Hermes said, waving a hand dismissively. “Anyway, now that you have your gifts – which, by the way, _you’re welcome_ – don’t you have a quest to be getting on with?”

Dionysus’s reply was to glance over his shoulder, gaze flickering over Aziraphale, Crowley, Mephistopheles, and Samael.

His eyes glowed burgundy.

“Yes,” he said slowly, “we do.”

* * *

“So tell me, Ariadne,” Eloise said. They were walking by the sort of wide, blue lake that shouldn’t exist outside a movie. A pair of swans glided over the surface, and on the far side, a whole family of wolves lapped at the water. In the middle, a crocodile sunned itself on a large, smooth rock that seemed to have been placed in the lake purely for the convenience of sunning reptiles. “What do you know about Eden?”

“Um,” Ariadne said intelligently. She glanced at Asterion, who cocked his head back at her. “It’s—it’s where the Abrahamics start things off, right? With the two mortals, Adam and …” Why did she want to say _Steve_? Oh, right. “… Eve, yeah, Eve. Adam and Eve.”

“Anything else?” Eloise asked. She held out a hand, and a robin landed on it and trilled at her.

Once again, Ariadne glanced sidelong at Asterion. But he wouldn’t be much help – there were three songbirds on his horns, and a fourth was sitting in his carefully cupped hands. So she now knew that Eden turned everyone who set foot inside it into a Disney princess … but that probably wasn’t what Eloise was looking for.

“Um …” Ariadne shook her head and looked around, as if simply surveying the scenery of a place she’d barely given three thoughts to over the past two thousand years would help her remember what those thoughts had been. “There’s—there’s a story about how Adam and Eve got kicked out of the garden. Something to do with – an apple and a snake? Feeding an apple to a snake?”

Silence. A rather startling amount of silence. Not only was Eloise staring at her with wide eyes and an O-shaped mouth, even the birds had quieted down.

“Maybe …” Ariadne licked her lips. “Maybe they didn’t feed the apple to the snake …”

Eloise blinked several times. “Hmmm,” she murmured. “Your fathers didn’t tell you anything about Eden, did they?”

“I—no?” Ariadne replied. Her cheeks began to heat up—which, now that she thought about it, was weird. If she didn’t have a body, how could she be blushing?

“You’ve spent your entire life incorporated,” Eloise said, as if she could read Ariadne’s mind. At this point, it wouldn’t surprise her. “And this isn’t the ethereal plane. Some of the trappings of being incorporated are going to stick.”

That didn’t explain anything, but Ariadne nodded like it did.

“Anyway!” Eloise said, marching off. Ariadne jog-trotted to keep up until Eloise realized what she was doing and slowed her pace. Asterion lumbered along on Ariadne’s other side. “Your fathers were in Eden, you see.”

“They—wait, what?” Her fathers? In Eden? But they weren’t—they couldn’t have been—

“Oh, they weren’t Adam and Eve.” Eloise tossed her an impish grin. “The Garden was a bit more crowded than some of the humans’ stories let on, you see.”

“Uh—uh-huh.”

“Several angels were stationed there, you see. Cherubim, mostly, like your father, before …” Eloise sighed, suddenly wistful.

“Wait. Cherubim—like—cherubs? The winged naked babies mortals keep mixing up with Eros?” Ariadne asked.

The wistful look vanished, replaced by a laugh. If Ariadne had been any less keyed up, it would have been soothing. And there was something familiar in that laugh – something that reminded her of her mother braiding her hair, of giggling under the covers with Xenodice and Acacallis …

“Humans’ attempts to depict the divine are always amusing, don’t you agree?” Eloise asked. “Although in this case, I think that particular depiction has less to do with human minds being unable to grasp the infinite and more to do with your _other_ father having some fun.”

“Crowley?” Ariadne asked.

Eloise nodded, smiling. “Quite. You should ask them for that story sometime. When they’re both together, mind. I don’t think it’ll be nearly as amusing if you ask them to tell it separately.”

“I’ll … keep that in mind,” Ariadne said, even as she wanted to ask, _How do you know this?_ and _How do you know my fathers?_ and _Who_ are _you?_

But she’d already asked the first one once and not gotten much of an answer. She doubted asking it again would get her any farther.

“Now where was I?” Eloise shook herself. “Ah, yes – Eden being crowded. Several cherubim, your father among them—”

“Aziraphale,” Ariadne said, just to be sure.

“Indeed. And one demon. Crowley, though that wasn’t what he was called at the time.”

“Right. Ok. So they were – here,” Ariadne said, looking around.

Eden was … she could admit it, now, just a little, that it was a beautiful place, if very weird. She had to wonder why they left … or had they been forced to leave when the mortals were kicked out?

“Quite,” Eloise said, her voice as light as a tap on the shoulder, gently drawing Ariadne from her thoughts. “But even in that crowd, your fathers were unique. They each gave the humans a gift, you see.”

Ariadne blinked. “They what?”

“And Adam and Eve couldn’t have gotten very far without either of those gifts,” Eloise went on, as if Ariadne hadn’t said anything. “And while you’ve done very well so far without them – that was before Heaven and Hell learned about your existence. Which. Well. We’ve _seen_ what happens, now that they know.”

Ariadne’s stomach twisted, and she pushed her hair back with one hand. Hard to argue with that reasoning. She’d gone thirty-eight hundred years and change without any angel or demon paying her a second glance; then, roughly two minutes after she’d found her fathers, she was being shot at, chased, and finally jumped in an alley and “discorporated.”

“So I don’t think we should discuss reincorporating you until you have those gifts,” Eloise went on.

“You—you think they’ll help?” Ariadne asked.

“Oh, _immensely_ ,” Eloise said. Then she glanced up at the sun – which, Ariadne was surprised to discover, had crept much closer to the western horizon while they were talking. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m afraid I have a few other things I need to see to before night falls. But you’ll be fine without me. No harm can come to you in Eden.”

“You’re—wait, _what_?” Ariadne stammered. “You can’t—don’t go! I don’t—”

“ _Au revoir_!” Eloise said, waved—

And vanished.

“—even know what the gifts …” Ariadne trailed off. No point begging the empty air for answers. “ _Fuck_.”

Asterion harrumphed in alarm.

Ariadne shot a watery smile at him. “Relax, Asterion—I’ve just gotten a lot saltier since you and I …”

Once again, she trailed off, as the enormity of what she was dealing with hit her. She thumped to the ground.

“Mmmrrph??” Asterion called, kneeling next to her, equal parts worried and confused.

Ariadne shook her head.

She was stuck, in Eden – wherever _that_ was – apparently without a body. And if – _if_ – this “Eloise” was to be trusted, she wasn’t going to get a body again until she managed to track down the gifts her fathers had given to humanity. Whatever those were.

And … and presumably her old body was still knocking around somewhere, unless “corporations” followed vampire or humans-trapped-in-Faerie rules and turned instantly to dust, in which case—the best-case scenario was that nobody knew where she was, the worst-case …

Ariadne pressed a hand to her mouth as the worst-case scenario unfolded in her mind. “Oh, _gods_.”

Asterion made another alarmed noise, now nervously patting her shoulder. For his sake, Ariadne pulled herself together and forced herself to look up.

“Asterion …” She swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “If I don’t figure out in a hurry just what my dads gave to the first Abrahamic mortals—I think I am royally screwed.” 

* * *

[1] Hades had taken one look at Samael’s cigarettes and told her, firmly, that she was welcome to smoke if she wanted, but since there was no wind in the Underworld, she’d be doing so at the back of the pack.

[2] He had, after all, spent over six thousand years fretting over that sword, and he certainly wasn’t going to stop now.

[3] Which was the only reason why he’d looked into the matter of Dungeons & Dragons at all. Research. For his report. Not because he wanted to play himself.

[4] One of Samael’s pockets, at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And on that note, I shall leave you for tonight ... however, remember, comments give me life, thanks for reading, and come find me on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/) if you'd like to chat!
> 
> Next update should be this Saturday!


	22. The Harrowing of Hell

This, Dionysus thought, had to be one of the most ridiculous plans he’d ever taken part in – and he’d taken part in some ridiculous plans.

He paced a rough semicircle, every sense he had on the lookout for threats. No magic, or at least, not more than he could help. This close to Heaven’s and Hell’s head offices, any “big” magic was likely to set off every alarm bell they had.

Which, yes, that was a thing – that Heaven and Hell had head offices. In London. In the _same building_.

Dionysus wished he was making this up.

He glanced over his shoulder at where Crowley and Aziraphale were both busy unscrewing a screen in front of an air vent. Using actual screwdrivers, because using magic on the screen would be far too risky. But apparently nobody had thought to guard against hand tools.

Samael was on their other side, doing the same thing as him – ostensibly acting as lookout, really checking on progress. She caught his eye and nodded, one sentry to another, before turning back to her watch.

Dionysus rolled his shoulders and once again let his senses wash over the alley. Other than two angels, one demon, and rather more rats, cockroaches, etc. than he cared to contemplate, he felt nothing.

“All right,” said Crowley. Dionysus turned to see him and Aziraphale taking the screen down and lowering it gently to the ground. Or at least, Aziraphale was lowering it gently, and Crowley had perforce to follow suit. “Should be good. Everyone got their aspects ready?”

_Aspects_. Apparently angels and demons couldn’t just change their shape at will – or they could, sort of, but the air vent was warded against that, as Mephistopheles had reported. Simply making themselves smaller wouldn’t work.

But an aspect – a specific animal shape that had been granted to a particular angel or demon, presumably for a reason – that was a different story. A loophole in the wards, forgotten about because most angels and demons didn’t have aspects. Mephistopheles certainly didn’t, which was why he’d had to head in via the front entrance and would meet them down there.

Crowley did, though – he had a snake-shape he could shift into (and apparently did frequently, which was how he knew about the loophole). And Aziraphale “still had” a dove aspect “from the Flood,” which for some reason had made Samael pinch her lips and look sour. Dionysus suspected there was some story behind that and decided he didn’t care what it was.

Samael had an aspect, too, though she hadn’t shared it with the class. And as for Dionysus …

Well.

He was a Greek god.

With that in mind, he shook his curls out, rolled his shoulders again, and shifted.

Shifting could be disorienting, which was why he always closed his eyes when he did it. When he opened them, his vantage point was about a foot off the ground. Immediately he sat down, brought a paw up to his mouth, and began to wash his face. It was easier to just lean into some instincts.

He would have expected to be told off for that – by Aziraphale if no one else, since, well, any paw that had been resting on the dirty asphalt of the alley could hardly be called sanitary – but the hissed, “ _Sserioussly_?” didn’t come from Aziraphale, and it wasn’t aimed at him. Instead Crowley – and the red-and-black snake with the lambent golden eyes had to be him – was glaring in the direction opposite Dionysus. “A mongoossse?”

Dionysus looked – and there, indeed, on the opposite side of the white rock dove was a pure white mongoose.

“Well, given that the first time a demon got the drop on us, he wore a _snake_ shape,” Samael grumbled, “this seemed like a good aspect to pick up.”

Snakes couldn’t actually roll their eyes – or at least, Dionysus didn’t think they could – but the way Crowley rotated his head made it absolutely clear that was what he was doing.

“Besides, it’s the smallest aspect I’ve got, and if we’re going to be insulting each other’s aspects …” Samael glanced at Dionysus, nose wrinkling. “Really? A tabby cat?”

If his lips moved that way in this shape, Dionysus would have smirked. As it was, he chuckled. “Deadliest land predator on the planet, pound-for-pound.” To punctuate the point, he stood up, yawned, and stretched – every last fang on full view, and his claws extending in front of him for good measure.

“And on that note,” Aziraphale said, “we should probably get a wiggle on. Crowley? You know where we’re going, so you’d best lead the way – I’ll go behind you – Samael, you after me, and Dionysus, would you mind bringing up the rear?”

Crowley groaned. “What have I sssaid to you about that phrase, angel?” But he didn’t argue, instead slithering up the wall and into the air shaft. Aziraphale fluttered behind him, then Samael, and finally Dionysus jumped up and inside.

They’d barely gone three feet when the air shaft opened into a large hole. Another vent ran beneath it, almost but not _quite_ perpendicular, with just enough of a slope to give the barest hope of survival.

“Yeah, thisss bit’sss alwaysss fun,” Crowley said. “Angel, you might want to just fly – Sssamael, Dionysssusss …”

“I’ll be fine,” Samael said, although her fur poofed up as she looked into the second air shaft.

Dionysus barely cast a glance into the descending air shaft. Another nice thing about being a cat – being able to rest secure in the knowledge that one’s terminal velocity was quite a bit less than one’s, well, _terminal_ velocity. “Don’t worry about me. Immortal, remember?”

“Sssssee you on the other sssside,” Crowley said, and with no further ado, tipped himself into the shaft. “WAAAA-HOOOOOOOOOOO!”

The _hoooooo_ echoed even as it faded.

“Oh, good Lord – _Crowley_!” Aziraphale shouted, taking flight and immediately entering a dive.

Samael was next, leaning over the edge with some trepidation. “Would you like me to carry you?” Dionysus asked.

“W-what?” Samael asked.

Dionysus’s only reply was to bare his teeth in what might have, in human shape, been called a smile.

Samael shuddered. “Thanks, but no thanks.” She leaned forward and tipped into the vent.

Dionysus followed, and—

_HOLY SHIT!_

The sensation was less “proton torpedoes charging down the exhaust pipe to the Death Star’s reactor core” and more “Luke rolling down the slip-and-slide at the base of Cloud City.” His claws extended, scrambling for any purchase, as rivets and stainless steel whipped past him. The more he tried to slow down, to regain control, the less control he had, until he was finally tumbling ass-over-head down the vent.

And as he tumbled farther and farther, he could feel pressure building all around him – first the telltale pop in the eardrums, but soon it was heightening on all sides, in his lungs, in his blood, in between every muscle and joint—

Then there was a _snap_ , like a runner bursting through the tape at the finish line, and the pressure was gone. He must have passed the border between planes, out of the physical world and into Hell truly.

Dionysus took a deep breath—and nearly gagged on the rotten egg smell. And the humidity! This was worse than those days in Greece when his father got into a particularly bad mood and let the air get heavier and heavier until mortals and immortals alike begged for the relief of a thunderstorm.

And still he kept tumbling. Down and down and down, until—

“ _Oof_!”

Dionysus landed on something scaly and coiled. He bounced, rolled, and skidded a few feet.

_Ow,_ he thought, laying still and just breathing. Non-terminal was not the same as non-damaging. He closed his eyes and focused his will on his shape – demanding that bruises heal and stretched muscles fix themselves _now_ , because he didn’t have the time to be at less than one hundred percent.

His body obeyed him, and only then did Dionysus open his eyes.

And stared right into a beady bird’s eye. Dionysus yowled and jumped straight up, into the top of the air vent.

“Sorry, dear boy!” Aziraphale said, hopping back. “Just wanted to make sure you were all right!”

So he was “dear boy” now. That had probably been inevitable. Dionysus shook his head and himself in the utterly nonchalant, I-meant-to-do-that way only a cat could manage. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. You?”

Even as he asked, he looked. Aziraphale looked none the worse for wear; he’d probably been able to fly most of the way down. Crowley, too, looked fine, shaking out his scales and stretching. Samael …

Samael was on the other side of Crowley, curled in a ball, head buried in her own fur and breathing deeply. Her pristine white coat was now a dingy, dusty gray.

Dionysus raised an eyebrow at Aziraphale. He got the sense that if a dove’s shoulders could manage a shrug, that’s what Aziraphale would have done. “She’s—”

“Fine,” Samael said. Slowly, she got up and dusted herself off. Based on the way Aziraphale’s feathers fluffed up, Dionysus guessed he wasn’t the only one to notice how she wobbled with the movement. “I’m fine. So. Are we going?”

“And I’m fine, too,” said Crowley, uncovering his head from his coils, “dessspite two of you landing on me, ssso, you know, thanksss for asssking.”

Dionysus glanced at Crowley, then looked up at the vent he and Samael had slid out of. Anyone with a reasonable understanding of physics probably would have guessed that they would land right where Crowley was resting. And there were plenty of other places where Crowley could have coiled up to wait for them – places out of range, even.

Dionysus turned to Aziraphale, question clear in the lift of his eyebrow, and Aziraphale slowly shook his head.

“We ready to go? Yesss? Good. Binssss are thisss way,” Crowley said, and without another word, slithered down the air shaft, past Samael and around the corner.

Aziraphale cast one glance at Dionysus, almost pleading, before hopping and taking a short flight to pass Samael and catch up to Crowley. “Do slow down, dear boy, you’re the only one who knows where we’re going.”

Samael followed Aziraphale, seemingly nonchalant, though Dionysus had to wonder if he’d merely forgotten how mongooses were supposed to breathe, or if she actually was panting slightly … and for that matter, if mongooses normally moved that slowly.

Well, only one way to find out.

Dionysus made a quick pass over his face with one paw, and then, as Aziraphale had asked him to, brought up the rear.

* * *

Meanwhile, in a lushly appointed game room in the depths of the Underworld, a sound rang out – something like, though not identical to, dice rolling across a polished wooden surface.

“So it seems,” Hades said from behind the screen, “that the main body of our party has made it into Hell without setting off alarms or ending up worse for wear … mostly.”

Zeus grunted and scribbled something on the notepad before him.

“And what about the rest of the party?” Hermes asked, glancing from Hades to Athena and back again, raising his eyebrows.

The sound of not-quite-dice on the tabletop rang out again, though this time it was Persephone frowning over the results. “Well …” she murmured.

Eris pressed a button on the table. A small drawer shot out, housing a sophisticated keyboard and mouse system. Eris tapped a few keys, and the image on one of the TVs in the bank before them zoomed in, while a crackle of static burst through the speakers and swiftly quieted.

Athena looked at the map before them, at the single red dot that represented Mephistopheles, and then at the television.

“I believe,” she said quietly, “that we are about to find out.”

* * *

Mephistopheles kept his head down, hunched his shoulders, and told himself to breathe.

He was being absolutely ridiculous. He was a demon. In Hell, where, arguably, he belonged. Just walking along and minding his own business. As long as he didn’t pick a fight with anyone or mouth off to a superior or try to lick the walls, he’d be fine.

Except guilt dogged every single one of his footsteps, and, well, guilt really wasn’t a good look on a demon. It was the sort of thing that called attention to itself. Demons weren’t supposed to feel guilty. Guilt was something they were supposed to inflict on others.[1]

And really, what did he have to feel guilty for? Other than, well, everything. But Hastur had started it, deciding he wanted to murder someone whose only sin was existing and making the troops restless. So if anyone should be feeling guilty—

“Oi! Mephistopheles!”

Before Mephistopheles could do more than register the voice, an arm reached out, grabbed him, and pulled him into an alcove.

He almost shouted. Almost lashed out. But somehow Mephistopheles grabbed hold of himself before he could do either. He took a deep breath and looked up at the person who had grabbed him.

And blinked.

It was Legion. And they looked worried.

“Have you heard?” Legion asked without preamble.

“Heard what?”

Legion looked from side to side, then opened the nearest door. The horrifying scents of ammonia, bleach, and piney freshness assaulted Mephistopheles’s nostrils just before Legion dragged him into the small closet.

Mephistopheles almost choked in the close air, not that he had time before Legion snapped a witch-light into being. “New orders from the Dark Council,” they said. “Surface trips now need to be authorized at the Prince level, signed in triplicate and filed with Dagon before you put so much as one toe topside.”

Mephistopheles blinked. That was annoying, but hardly merited the scared eyes or the quivering hair in front of him. “And …?”

“ _And_ they’re bloody auditing all surface trips since the traitor’s trial,” Legion said. “Double penalties for anything unauthorized.”

Mephistopheles tried to cast his mind back to what he’d been doing since Crowley had taken a bath in Holy Water and survived. He’d spent a lot of time on the surface, but most of that had been under orders, so he should be—

“Mephistopheles!” Legion grabbed Mephistopheles by the shoulders and shook him. “Hastur won’t sign our chitty!”

Mephistopheles blinked. “What?”

“For the trips we had to take to— _you know_! We asked him to sign, and he wouldn’t!”

Now Mephistopheles’s stomach plunged. He hadn’t even thought to ask Hastur to sign anything beforehand, because when was the last time surface trips had been audited? And now—

A thought occurred to him, and he almost laughed.

Here he was, actively smuggling two angels, Hell’s most notorious traitor, and a representative of another pantheon into Hell to steal one of Hell’s greatest treasures. If he survived that, he was going to bugger off to Heaven with that same motley crew to steal one of Heaven’s greatest treasures. And if they survived that … he had no idea what was coming next, but honestly? If Hell caught him and he couldn’t convince Crowley to share the secret of surviving Holy Water, he was probably looking forward to a sham trial followed by a very short and painful bath. If he was _lucky_.

And that was just for what he planned to do – not even counting the bit where he’d made a suicide pact with an archangel and actively worked with her for centuries! Or helped her trail a Greek god through London! Or anything else he’d done recently!

Yet here he was, worrying about being caught for an unauthorized surface trip. What in Heaven’s name could the Dark Council do to him for that that would in any way compare to what he actually had coming to him?

Realizing that? That was freedom. Dimly, he wondered if this was what Crowley felt like all the time.

Then he shook his head. Freedom wouldn’t do him much good if he was winked out of existence before he could enjoy it, now, would it?

So he brought his mind back to what Legion was saying. About chitties that hadn’t been signed, about orders from the Dark Council, about what Legion probably had waiting for them as soon as the audit—

_Oh._

_OH._

“Hastur – Hastur’s not on the Dark Council, is he?” Mephistopheles asked.

Legion blinked. “What? Well, no—that’s only princes and lords, right? And, y’know.” They pointed down. “ _Himself_.”

Yes, _Himself_ – Himself who hadn’t wanted Mephistopheles to talk about their conversation to any other demon, Himself who had been very interested in everything Mephistopheles had found out about Ariadne, Himself who hadn’t been sharing anything at all with the likes of Hastur.

Mephistopheles smiled. “Talk to the Dark Council.”

Legion’s jaw dropped. “ _What_?”

“Tell them what happened. That Hastur ordered you to the surface, and for what, and now he won’t sign your chitty.”

“But …” Legion chewed their lower lip. “Hastur said we weren’t supposed to tell anyone! That—”

“Because he wasn’t supposed to be leading a mission to the surface to kill the redhead, obviously,” Mephistopheles interrupted. “And now that he’s done it, he’s going to want to cover it up. Which means throwing us under the bus. Unless …”

“We throw him under the bus first.” Legion’s eyes glittered – and narrowed. “Hey. If this is such a brilliant idea, why aren’t you doing it?”

“Because I can’t split off bits of myself and send an unimportant part to face the Dark Council and deal with their … displeasure,” Mephistopheles said. “You got smitten by the redhead _twice_ and survived. If I’d gotten smitten once, I’d just be a smudge on the ground. Even if the Dark Council gets annoyed with you and decides to shoot first, ask questions later, you’ll be fine.”

Legion’s eyes went wide. “That’s … true …”

“And if they’re dealing with Hastur’s insubordination, they’ll be too busy to punish you,” Mephistopheles added. That was a lie; the Dark Council was very good at multitasking. But with any luck, Legion would take the hope offered and not realize it was bait until it was too late.

And if the Dark Council was occupied with Hastur and Legion and their audit … hopefully they wouldn’t pay too much attention to what was going on in the Bins.

Hopefully. Now Mephistopheles had to wonder who, exactly, was being baited.

“That’s … true.” Legion’s eyes lit up. “Thanks, Meph – d’you mind if we call you Meph? You’re a lifesaver.”

He did mind. He minded quite a bit. But he supposed that was his punishment for what he was doing to Legion.

Legion patted Mephistopheles’s arm, cracked the door open, looked both ways and hurried out. Mephistopheles did his own check that the coast was clear and followed.

Then he turned his collar up, hunched his shoulders again, and hurried toward the Bins.

If Crowley’s memories of how Hell’s ventilation system worked were correct – and Mephistopheles sincerely hoped they were, because if Crowley didn’t remember they were all _very_ screwed – then there was an air return vent that connected to the main vent tunnel in a small dead-end corridor a few turns away from the Bins. That was where they’d be waiting. Mephistopheles just had to find it and hope that the corridor was empty and would stay empty long enough for everyone to get out of the vents and changed back.

And before he got there, he needed to scrounge up some clothes for them – something that would fit better into Hell’s aesthetic than Crowley’s flash bastard wardrobe, Dionysus’s careful casual style, Samael’s angelic standard issue, or Aziraphale’s period piece of an outfit. At least that part would be easy – all he had to do was nip into the laundry, grab some coats and shirts and accessories from the unlaundered[2] pile, and nip back out again.

And it was. Nobody saw him, nobody questioned him, and nicking stuff from the laundries was such a cherished Hellish pastime that nobody would care if they did see him. He stuffed the laundry in his knapsack and hurried out again.

He’d spent millennia learning the art of being inconspicuous, and he put every last bit of that knowledge to work now. On the off-chance that anyone did notice him, they wouldn’t have seen anything suspicious. “Oh, that’s just Mephistopheles, skulking around and pretending like he’s too evil to give anyone the time of day, as usual,” would be what they’d say, if they actually cared enough to say anything.

There were benefits to working in an office where the best you could hope for out of your coworkers was apathy, and Mephistopheles planned to milk them for all he was worth.

Now he just had to find everyone else …

“Hssst! Mephissstopheless!”

Mephistopheles looked up.

If his nerves had been a tad less hardened, he probably would have yelped and fainted – and he’d like to see the person who would react better to seeing _two glowing yellow eyes_ staring at them from an air return vent. As it was, Mephistopheles just had to bite his tongue, hard, take a deep breath, and nod to the snake in the vent.

He looked side to side. Coast was still clear. Then he took a breath, made himself tall enough to reach the vent, fished the screwdriver out of his knapsack, and got to work.

“I’ll keep an eye out – you just ssscrew,” Crowley said. “And fill in your own one-liner after, I’ve got my handssss full playing lookout.”

Mephistopheles heard a snigger and a long-suffering, “ _Crow_ -ley!” in response to that. They actually coaxed a smile out of him. But like Crowley, he had his hands full, so he kept to his work.

He did have to wonder, though, why Samael hadn’t pointed out that Crowley didn’t have hands in this shape. He’d walked right into that one, and usually Samael would only be too happy to point out the obvious …

He didn’t have to wonder long. Like everything else in Hell, the air return vents were poorly made and never maintained, so they were only one sneeze away from falling apart at the best of times. Mephistopheles had the cover off the vent in no time, leaving him with nothing to do but step back and let the rest of them jump down.

While they changed back, Mephistopheles dug in his knapsack for the clothes he’d nicked. They came to his hand instantly. He _loved_ this thing. “Got you some disguises,” he said. “Not much, but it ought to make you a little less conspicuous. And, you know, won’t cost us any miracles to make them. Here.”

“Thanksss,” Crowley said, grabbing the first few articles of clothing from Mephistopheles had to hand. “Believe thessse are yoursss, angel.”

“I’m not sure they’ll fit …”

“Don’t have to. Ragged urchin iss very _in_ thiss year.”

Mephistopheles dared a look up to see Crowley putting the worn and stained jacket over Aziraphale’s shoulders and tying a scarf around his neck, then covering the white-blond curls with a cap that had seen better days. “There. Nobody’d take you for an angel now.”

Mephistopheles had his doubts about that – even when eyeing his disguise with distaste, there was still a decidedly undemonic air of goodwill and cheerfulness that settled around Aziraphale like the opposite of a raincloud. But at least it was just an air now, not a flaming, blinking beacon.

Mephistopheles glanced next at Dionysus, who had grabbed one of the more modern pieces from the pile – Mephistopheles thought it was called a “hoodie” – as well as black fingerless gloves. He’d pulled the hood up over his head, shading his face. He actually looked … fairly demonic. And the tension with which he carried himself projected an aura of mess-with-me-and-you’ll-regret-it, which could come in very handy. The glowing burgundy eyes were a nice touch, too.

Speaking of which – Mephistopheles turned to Crowley. Crowley had gotten mostly into the spirit of things, picking a dirty trench coat that was too short for his arms and legs while at the same time double the width he needed. The gloves he grabbed were practically falling off his hands, and the trapper hat covered his hair quite well. The only problem was the sunglasses. “You’ll need to take the sunglasses off, Crowley.”

Crowley froze. “Eh?”

“Everyone knows you wear them. Almost as much of a tell as the …” Mephistopheles tapped his temple where Crowley’s snake sigil would be. “And this isn’t Earth. Nobody will notice your eyes.”

“Riiiight,” Crowley said.

“I can hold onto them for you, dear boy,” Aziraphale said.

“No, no—ssssss’fine,” Crowley said. Which, clearly it wasn’t. But Crowley nonetheless took the sunglasses off, putting them away in the breast pocket of his suit jacket.

So that was three down, now he just had to worry about Samael. “Samael, how are you—”

He blinked. “Samael?”

“H-h-h-here.”

The voice was smaller than he was used to, and came from near his feet—

Mephistopheles looked down, and his corporation’s stomach plunged. “Samael?”

She hadn’t changed back. She was still in whatever form she must have used to get through the vents – weasel, maybe? Ferret?

And she was shaking.

“What’s wrong?” Mephistopheles asked, crouching next to her.

“Just—just g-g-give me a m-minute, I—” Samael shuddered and coughed.

Dionysus crouched beside Mephistopheles, ran a hand over the air just above her fur, and murmured something. He hissed. “Ooh, that’s not good.”

“What isn’t?” Mephistopheles asked, as his corporation’s stomach somehow sank even lower.

“It’s—something like radiation sickness?” Dionysus replied. “I think it’s the air down here – seems to be affecting her badly. She was a bit off when we first crossed the barrier between planes, but I thought it was just the rough ride we had. Now, though …” Dionysus glanced down at her and bit his lip.

Behind him, softly, but still loudly enough to be heard, Crowley asked, “Angel?”

“I’m fine,” Aziraphale said – and not in the stubborn, don’t-mind-me tones of one who was one stubbed toe away from passing out, but in the mystified voice of someone who truly was fine and couldn’t, for the life of him, understand _why_.

“M-m-maybe you lot sh-sh-should …” Samael started.

“No,” Mephistopheles said. “Absolutely not.” He picked Samael up and cradled her close. “We’re not leaving you behind. We’ll—we’ll think of something. Somehow. We always do.”

He just wished he had any idea what that something could be.

* * *

“If Crowley and Aziraphale are able to give each other limited immunity to their environments without even consciously willing it,” Athena said, eyes narrowed and glaring at Hades and Persephone, “then Mephistopheles and Samael ought to be able to do the same thing.”

Hades sighed. “These aren’t our rules—”

“You are campaign masters. You have influence!” Athena insisted.

“Not enough to rewrite the laws of Heaven and Hell,” Persephone said. “They’ve built up their defenses for millennia, and those defenses aren’t something we can demolish with the roll of a die.”

Athena’s nostrils flared. “Yet Crowley and Aziraphale—”

“It’s not the same thing,” Hera interrupted. “Their bond goes back millennia. It’s romantic and sexual – they have a _child_ together; it’s—”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Hermes did not sound sorry at all, “but does anyone in this room actually think that love is a necessary ingredient in making babies? Or sex? Because, if so—”

Hera silenced him with a look. “For us? No. For mortals? Certainly not. For _them_? Quite possibly.” She turned back to Athena. “What Crowley and Aziraphale have is essentially a common-law marriage. Samael and Mephistopheles are just friends.”

Athena’s eyes flashed, but it was Zeus she turned to next. “Father? This affects your hero more than mine. Why aren’t you saying anything?”

Zeus looked up from his notepad and sighed. “Athena … your stepmother is right. We’ll have to come up with a different strategy, that’s all.” And without a further word, he turned back to the notepad and began scribbling.

“Then you are both wrong,” Athena said.

“Athena—” Hera started.

“No. _Listen_ to me. Love is love. It is—it is the one thing the absolute mess that is the English language has over ours. _Love is love_. Call it _agape_ , or _philia_ , or even _eros_ or _storge_ – love. Is. Love. And if you – _you two especially_ ,” she rounded on Hades and Persephone, “cannot see that, then you are blinder than old Tiresias!”

Hades sighed and rubbed his temples. “I understand what you mean, but our influence—”

“Hades.” Persephone rested a hand on his arm and raised an eyebrow at him. Hades raised both of his back at her.

A wordless argument was had in this manner, until Persephone turned to Athena. “Give us a minute. We’ll see what we can do.”

Hades and Persephone bent their heads together and stared at their notepad and tablet. Behind the screen, not-dice were rolled, words scribbled, and meaningful looks traded.

Finally Hades said, “That’s _it_?” and Persephone nodded. Persephone was the one to address Athena.

“You and Father both roll a d6 once. If you get the same number, Mephistopheles and Samael can unconsciously protect one another. If not, you’ll need to think of something else.”

“Oooh, seventeen percent odds, ish,” Eris said. “That’s not bad. And don’t give me that look,” she added to Hermes, who was raising an eyebrow at her. “There’s nothing more chaotic than math. Especially probability.”

“Indeed,” Athena said. And without further ado, she picked up a die, jiggled it in her hand, and tossed it on the table.

It came up as a five.

“Father?” Athena asked.

Zeus carelessly tossed his own die to the table.

For a moment, it looked like a four. Then – in the space between one eye-blink and the next, the time it would take to concentrate and focus – it was clear that two fives sat side-by-side.

And Athena smiled. “Told you so.”

* * *

Crowley and Mephistopheles had both said that the place where the scales were likely to be kept was called the Bins. Aziraphale knew what a bin was. So he really ought to have been less surprised when Crowley picked the lock on the large metal door, swung it open, and revealed an entire row of festering, stinking garbage skips.

Yet surprised he was.

“Hell keeps Famine’s scales with the _rubbish_?” Aziraphale gasped.

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” Mephistopheles murmured, shoving his hands in his pockets and not meeting anyone’s eyes.

“And, y’know, we were thrown out like so much rubbish, once,” Crowley added. “So – seems fitting to the lower-downs.”

Dionysus said something under his breath that, based on his expression, was highly uncomplimentary. Then he rolled up his sleeves and adjusted the gloves. “Fantastic. So. Now that we’re going dumpster-diving in Hell, does anyone have any idea where we should start, or are we supposed to just dive right in?”

“Mmmm …” That was Samael, lips pursed and eyes narrowed – until she broke it off, hissing and rubbing her temple. “Sorry. Can’t get a read on anything down here. It’s all just—ow.”

“Don’t strain yourself,” Mephistopheles said, putting a hand on her shoulder – and just as quickly removing it again, casting a guilty, embarrassed look at Aziraphale and Crowley. As if they were in any position to judge! And even if they had been, Aziraphale was too busy thanking his lucky stars[3] that Samael had recovered so quickly after that turn she’d taken back in the corridor to even think about it.

Dionysus waved a hand, tilted his head back, and breathed in deeply. He coughed almost at once. “Nope – sorry, not getting anything either. Except that you all need to come up with a better method of waste management.”

And without a further word, Dionysus strode to the nearest skip, flipped open the lid with a snap of his fingers, and – there really was no other word for this – dove in.

“I suppose one of us to a skip would make the most sense,” Aziraphale said, resigned.

In response, Crowley peeled off his gloves and handed them to Aziraphale. “Don’t want you touching too much,” he muttered. “Y’know. Just in case.”

Aziraphale smiled. “Thank you, dear boy.”

And with that, they got to work.

As he dug through the skip and pushed aside everything from plastic bags and half-eaten sandwiches to bloodied and broken shackles and fraying whips (he didn’t want to know, he _really_ didn’t want to know), Aziraphale tried to tell himself that this was fine. No different than going through boxes after an estate sale, really. He’d certainly found himself in—well, maybe not _worse_ —but comparable places when in search of a rare first edition or misprint. When one was searching for a needle in a haystack, one had to be prepared to end up covered in straw, so to speak.

Except …

He’d been the one to suggest this, but even knowing that, there had to be a better way.

_If I were Satan or a Prince of Hell,_ Aziraphale wondered, _and I had decided that a rubbish skip was the best place to store something precious and important, where exactly would I put it? So I could find it but no one else could?_

Well, if they were going to go by _those_ rules – what Aziraphale would do would be to cover the thing in wards that were keyed to only allow one or more specific persons at the thing. But that couldn’t be right, because Samael and Dionysus had both tried to sense for the scales, but they hadn’t found anything. So—

_Wait._

What had they been looking for? If they were looking for the scales, not wards …

Aziraphale paused. Then, reasoning that there was no real harm in looking – he’d only do it for a moment or two, and it might even save some time – he closed his eyes and extended his senses.

He winced. Now that he was open to it, fear, anger, and hurt assailed him from every direction.

But Aziraphale pushed on. He didn’t pause to examine any of it in particular, just let it brush past him, searching instead for something that was different, something that was protective, not destructive—

And then he found—something.

If the rest of the contents of the Bins were sharp and hot and spiky, pain radiating outward to cut anyone who dared to come too close, this was dull and cold and blunt. Pain radiating inward, presenting a blank face to the world to convince its enemies to look elsewhere.

Aziraphale opened his eyes.

_There._

“I think,” he said – and oh, his voice did sound rather reedy; perhaps he’d looked too long – “we might want to check that one.”

He pointed to a skip that looked no different than any of the other skips.

Dionysus was the first to pop his head out. “Oh? Why that one?”

“It feels different.”

Now Crowley unearthed himself from his skip. “Angel. What did you do?”

“Just had a feel around – no need to worry, dear boy, I’m perfectly all right—”

“But then why did you find …” That was Samael, climbing out of her skip to investigate, trailing off as she got closer.

“No, no, absolutely not,” Crowley said, contorting his leg at a near-impossible angle as he slithered out of his skip. “You and Aziraphale aren’t touching this. Mephistopheles, Dionysus? Give me a hand.”

Together the three of them opened the skip, Aziraphale and Samael hovering close behind. Once the skip was open, it revealed …

A safe. A simple safe, with what looked to Aziraphale to be a simple combination lock.

Crowley and Mephistopheles looked at the safe, looked at each other, and looked at the safe again. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Crowley asked.

“A combination lock usually takes three numbers …” Mephistopheles chewed on his lower lip. “But it would be awfully stupid, even for them.”

“What would be?” Dionysus asked.

Once again, Crowley and Mephistopheles exchanged glances. This time, it was Mephistopheles who spoke first. “Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.”

Samael sucked in a gasp; Aziraphale’s eyes widened. Dionysus only blinked. “Are you saying that you think the combination to get into the safe is six-six-six?”

“Yep,” Crowley said.

Dionysus glanced sidelong at the safe, then sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “If you’re right … that is just one short step up from the combination an idiot would have on his luggage. One _very_ short step.”

“Certainly the demonic equivalent of one-two-three-four-five,” Crowley replied, which confused Aziraphale to no end – and by the looks on their faces, confused Samael and Mephistopheles too – but made Dionysus smile.

“Shall we?” Crowley asked, raising an eyebrow at Mephistopheles.

“If this doesn’t work …”

“Then we brute force it,” Dionysus replied. The way he put his arms behind his head and stretched suggested he might just be relishing the thought.

“Right. Onward and upward, then. Or downward, technically.” And with that, Crowley reached into the skip and turned the dial to six, then six, and then six again.

Aziraphale held his breath.

There was a faint click of steel-on-steel – an even fainter whoosh of power – and then—

The safe opened.

Inside was a simple set of black scales.

“Are those the scales we’re looking for?” Dionysus asked.

Samael drew a breath, but Crowley and Aziraphale beat her to the answer. “Yes,” they said, almost in unison.

Mephistopheles opened his knapsack, reached inside the safe, and took hold of the scales.

Nothing happened.

He drew the scales out of the safe.

Nothing happened.

Letting out a slow sigh of relief, Mephistopheles dropped the scales into the knapsack.

And all Hell broke loose.

* * *

[1] The fact that demons _did_ occasionally feel guilt was the sort of thing the lower-downs knew about, loathed, and did their damnedest to stamp out.

[2] Given that cleanliness is next to godliness and the way Hell felt about godliness, it was much better for everyone this way.

[3] In virtually any other circumstances, Aziraphale would have been thanking a Higher Power, but given where they were … best not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another day, another chapter - you know the drill. I love comments, and come hit me up on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/) if you'd like to chat!
> 
> Next update is on Tuesday!


	23. Defy the Laws of Nature and Come Out Alive

When Ariadne and Asterion had been young, one of their favorite pastimes had been to go to the hills outside Knossos, where the land was wild and the people few and far between. And once there, they were free. Asterion would investigate fruits and flowers, or chase birds, or nap in the sunshine. Ariadne would try short flights, or draw on a wax tablet, or make flower crowns and put them on Asterion. Their nurse, when they were young enough to still be burdened with one, would work on mending or doze while pretending to watch them.

Over thirty-eight hundred years had passed since Ariadne and Asterion had wandered the hills, never imagining that one day, the simple freedom they took for granted would be ripped away. Yet some things didn’t change. Because they had scarcely been together a few hours before the two of them had found their way to a tree that grew on the side of a hill and sat down under it. Ariadne found some flowers and began to weave a daisy chain. Asterion leaned back and looked through the leaves, huffing a happy sigh.

Ariadne wished she could join him in that, surrender to the nostalgia and let herself go. Even as her hands moved in long-worn patterns, so ingrained as to be automatic, her mind moved in furious circles that only made her dizzy.

She’d told herself that doing something with her hands would help her to think. She’d been taught to weave as soon as she was old enough to hold a shuttle, and anyone who bothered with weaving learned quickly that there was nothing that inspired thought quite like a loom, a bit of thread, and some quiet. But maybe the daisy chains just weren’t a good enough substitute, or maybe …

Maybe Ariadne had no idea how to get herself out this mess.

She glanced sidelong at Asterion.

And maybe she felt guilty for trying. She’d barely gotten her brother back, and already she was trying to leave him again.

With that thought, she flopped against the wide tree trunk and sighed.

Asterion sat up, stared at her, and grunted a question.

Ariadne shook her head. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

Asterion snorted. It was one of the most bullish sounds he had, and also one of the most sarcastic.

Ariadne sat up and raised an eyebrow at him. “Excuse me?”

He raised an eyebrow back at her, then rolled his eyes and shrugged, as if to say, _You heard me._

“Oh, I _heard_ you all right. I bet you folks out in China _heard_ you. I’m just wondering what gave you the—”

_What. The fuck. Am I doing._

Ariadne groaned and dropped her head in her hands. She’d barely gotten her brother back, and not only was she trying to get away from him again, she was _also_ picking a stupid fight with him.

_What is wrong with me?_

A warm hand landed on her shoulder, followed by a questioning, “Mmmrph?”

Part of Ariadne wanted to shake her head and tell Asterion that it was nothing. But that would be stupid, because while Asterion was many things that had made it difficult for him to live in human society, particularly in a bustling palace in a bustling city like Knossos, one thing he never was and never had been was stupid. And to pretend that he wouldn’t realize that there was a lot more than “nothing” going on her in head would be the same as calling him stupid.

So instead Ariadne took a deep breath, pushed her hair back from her face, and sat up. She shot Asterion a watery smile. “I missed you, you know. I missed you a lot.”

Asterion’s ears flapped slowly – his equivalent of a sad smile. It was as good as saying, _I missed you too._

“The thing is, though …” Ariadne gulped and forced another deep breath. She was not going to break down right now. She was not. She wouldn’t allow it. “As much as I missed you? Right now, I’m missing a lot of other people too.”

Asterion gently rubbed her shoulder, and once again, his ears flapped slowly.

“And it’s not—it’s not fair. To you. Because—I _missed_ you. And I can’t tell you how many nights I couldn’t sleep, and I’d look out at the sea or the stars or the mountains, and I’d think to myself, _If I could just have one more week, or day, or even hour with Asterion, I’d make it count, I’d make sure he knew how special he was and how loved, and I’d tell him …_ ”

Ariadne choked and forced the rest of that sentence back where it had come from. One thing at a time.

“And now …” She threw her hands wide. “Here we are! And what am I doing? Anything but that!”

Asterion blinked, cocked his head to one side, and asked, “Mmmrrph?”

Ariadne forced a smile. He’d be able to tell, of course; he always could. But a forced smile was better than no smile at all. “You are, you know. You’re so special. I don’t care what Minos and the rest of them thought. You’re not …”

When Ariadne had been ten, she’d sworn to herself she’d never say _monster_ to Asterion’s face – and she’d only use it behind his back when she had to explain to others what he wasn’t. She was not going to break that vow now.

So instead, she kept the watery smile in place and told the part of the truth that wouldn’t reopen old wounds. “You were the best brother a girl could have asked for.”

Asterion’s ears flapped again, and he patted her head, as if to say, _Same to you._

Ariadne shook her head. “No. I really wasn’t. I—”

She took a deep breath. Now was not the time to spiral into guilt and self-recrimination. Even if – no, even _though_ – she deserved it. She knew Asterion, and Asterion knew her. Even after he’d been locked in the labyrinth, he would always know when she was sad or angry and would try, when he could, to cheer her up.

He wasn’t going to have to do that now.

Ariadne took a second deep breath, and then a third. “I let you down,” she said finally, “and I am so sorry.”

Asterion’s eyes went wide, and his nostrils flared. He drew in a sharp breath.

Then, without warning, he sat up, rested his forearms on his knees, and fixed his eyes on the horizon. It was one of Asterion’s _I don’t want to talk about this_ signals, a relatively mild one, but still as clear as the lowering sun above them.

Ariadne’s shoulders slumped, but she bit back the sigh and held it between her teeth. If he didn’t want to talk about this, then … then they wouldn’t talk about this. It was fine. Or at any rate, it would have to be fine, because Ariadne was the one who’d gotten him killed, and to force him to talk about something he didn’t want to talk about just to make her feel better would be adding insult to (mortal) injury.

So Ariadne picked up the half-finished daisy chain, grabbed another daisy, and got back to work.

She wasn’t sure how long she kept at it, adding daisy after daisy until the chain she was creating became less of a crown-in-the-making more like extensions for Rapunzel. She was vaguely aware of the shadows lengthening, but the only one that drew her attention, eventually, was Asterion’s – and that was because his shadow shifted and the grass rustled with his passing.

Ariadne looked up. “What?”

Asterion had tilted his head to the side, and he whuffed out an inquiry.

Ariadne shrugged. “You said you didn’t want to talk about it. I’m not going to ask you to talk about something you don’t want to talk about.”

He snorted, but it wasn’t one of derision or disbelief. More like resignation. Then he patted her head.

Now it was Ariadne’s turn to snort. And throw the daisy chain to the side. “So. Enough about me. What about you? What have you been up to since …” The words dried up as this skirted dangerously close to things Asterion didn’t want to talk about. “Since we last saw each other?”

Asterion blinked, then shrugged, first with this right shoulder and then with his left, as if to say, _This and that._

“Have you …” Ariadne’s throat still felt dry, but she had to ask. “Have you been here the whole time?”

Asterion nodded.

Ariadne blinked. That—that didn’t make sense. Mortals were supposed to follow their faiths after death, and there was no way—Ariadne hadn’t even heard of the Abrahamics and their strange and foul-tempered god until hundreds of years after Asterion had died, and she hadn’t heard of Eden until after the Christian version of their faith had swept through the tottering Roman Empire like fire through a sacked city. Asterion couldn’t have possibly ended up in Eden because he believed he’d end up there.

But then how …?

“How long has it been for you?” Ariadne asked. “It’s been thirty-eight hundred years for me. Give or take.”

Asterion tilted his head first to one side, then to the next, and then to the first side again. Then he nodded. _Sounds about right._

Ariadne’s jaw dropped. And then she shook her head.

It didn’t matter. Or, well, it did, but that could be added to the long, long list of questions that could be dealt with later. Ariadne forced it to the side and swallowed.

“Well then,” she said, wiping her hands on her legs. “Why don’t you show me around? You must know this place backwards and forwards by now.”

Asterion huffed with pleasure and bounded to his feet. His ears flapped as he held out a hand to Ariadne, hauling her up as soon as she took it.

And he didn’t let go once she was up. That was—new. Or older than she was expecting. Asterion had stopped liking holding hands once he was ten or so, when he became increasingly averse to touch from just about anyone.

Still, he seemed happy enough to take her hand now. And Ariadne was certainly not about to let go.

He led them down a different path than the one they’d climbed up, eagerly pointing to things as they passed. Here, a rock that looked like a lion’s head; there, a sheltered cleft that overlooked a snowy wonderland and—were those penguins? And polar bears? _Together_?

Ariadne barely had a moment to attempt to reconcile that with her own sense of geography before Asterion was tugging her hand and leading her toward the next wonder.

They reached a waterfall just as the sun was starting to set and stayed beside it until the sun had long disappeared, watching as the slanting light made rainbows and watercolor paintings of the falling droplets. Asterion led her along the lakeshore next, and they stopped to watch a double moonrise: the moon in the sky and its silver twin in the still lake before them.

The stars were brilliant here, and even though Asterion pulled Ariadne’s hand to lead her to the next sight, Ariadne didn’t move. Back home, the mortals had filled the sky with so much light that it was almost impossible to see the stars. Even on the clearest of nights, they were just a few dim pinpricks in the heavens.

Here though … here it was like the old days, when the stars blanketed the world like a quilt sewn with jewels. Ariadne held tight to Asterion’s hand and watched as her old friends climbed above the horizon and swam through the lake before them.

She might have stayed there all night if she hadn’t seen Corona Borealis.

She gasped. It was too late in the year for Corona Borealis, what was it—

It didn’t matter.

Ariadne pursed her lips together and watched the glittering semicircle float through the sky.

The mortals were wrong about one thing; the stars hadn’t been her wedding crown. But the mortals were right about another thing, the more important thing: those stars were _hers_ , given to her by Dionysus the same night he’d given her his heart.

He had to be worried sick …

Ariadne closed her eyes and throttled the sobs that threatened to break free. She didn’t have time to cry. And even if she had time, she didn’t want Asterion to see her do it. He didn’t need that now. Or ever.

He already sensed something was wrong, pulling at her hand and making questioning noises.

Ariadne took a deep breath. Then she looked up and smiled, or tried to. “So. What else did you want to show me?”

Asterion raised an eyebrow, but he turned and led her away from the lakeshore. Ariadne followed.

But she did look back. Just once. And blew a kiss to the Corona. And hoped – prayed, really – that wherever Dionysus was, he’d feel it, and know she was thinking about him, and know that somehow, some way, she’d find her way back to him.

Promise made, she faced forward and followed Asterion.

They walked all night, Asterion happy to show her all the night-blooming plants, the meadow of fireflies, the snowy owls in their nests and the bats cavorting through the trees. A capybara Asterion seemed to know fell into step with them, chattering away to Asterion as the three of them walked.

The capybara left them shortly after dawn, and Asterion and Ariadne kept wandering.

Until they came to the wall.

Ariadne’s eyes went wide, and she came to a dead stop, forcing Asterion to stop too. “Asterion.”

“Mmmrph?”

“Did you—did you know there was a wall here?”

Asterion raised an eyebrow at her, as if to say, _Obviously, I’ve only been here for thousands of years._

“Do you know what’s on the other side?” Ariadne asked.

Now Asterion shook his head. Perhaps that was to be expected. The wall was made of smooth cream stone, nearly sheer and hundreds of feet tall. He could never have climbed it to see what lay beyond.

Ariadne, on the other hand, didn’t have to worry about climbing. … Hopefully.

“I’m going to go up and have a look,” Ariadne said. “Is that ok?”

Asterion’s eyebrows arched up, but he nodded and, with some reluctance, let go of her hand.

Ariadne shot him a smile, took a couple steps back, and let her wings out. They sprang to life with the usual _fwoosh_ , stretching in the early-morning sun.

_Oh, thank Gaia._

Then Ariadne looked up, took a deep breath, and took off.

Her wings, thankfully, seemed to suffer no ill effects from the discorporation – she was able to get to the top of the high, high wall no later than she was expecting to, without any more discomfort than the typical soreness of not having properly flown in far too long. When she landed on the top of the wall – which was conveniently thick and offered plenty of room for it – she wasn’t even winded.

And now that she was up there—

Ariadne tried to look at the horizon—and squealed and closed her eyes.

_Bright light, bright light!_

She must have misjudged the time or the angle of the sun. Shading her eyes with one hand, slowly she forced them open—

She didn’t look at the horizon right away. Not properly, anyway. Maybe that was why she saw what she did.

A lone figure stood on the wall, perhaps fifty feet away. The white robes were new, but the white wings were familiar, and the cloudpuff of white-blond hair? She’d recognize that anywhere.

Ariadne’s knees buckled as something like relief flooded through her. “Aziraphale!”

She ran toward him, trying not to laugh and sob at the same time. Because this was—it was _embarrassing_ , was what it was. She was a grown-ass woman, millennia old; she had absolutely no business harboring secret fantasies of her real parents popping up out of the blue to tell her who she was and take her home again—not literally, no, she had a life and a home and she was pretty darn happy with both, thank you very much, but metaphorically, for someone to tell her what she was and where she belonged.

And now Aziraphale was here! When she was at her most lost and almost-alone! And if he was here, Crowley couldn’t be far off, and maybe, maybe they’d even brought Dionysus, and then Ariadne’s most pressing problem would be whom to hug first.

Except—

Aziraphale wasn’t looking at her.

Ariadne stopped. “Aziraphale?” Her voice cracked on the last syllable, reminding her that her emotions had been doing a high-wire act ever since she woke up in this strange land and that the ground was a long, long way down.

Aziraphale’s gaze did not so much as flicker in her direction. Instead it remained fixed on the horizon, worry etched into every line and curve of his face and in the hands that twisted around each other.

Ariadne looked at the horizon too, because maybe if she saw what so interesting, the fact that she wasn’t would hurt a little less—

The light was still too bright, and Ariadne squeaked and flinched away.

And when she opened her eyes, she and Aziraphale were no longer alone.

A giant black snake – its head alone had to be as big as Ariadne’s – with a red belly and strangely familiar yellow eyes had slithered onto the wall and over to Aziraphale’s left side. It rose on its belly like a cobra about to strike, and—changed.

Black robes. Black wings. A snake tattoo on the right temple. Blood-red hair much longer than the last time she’d seen it, curling in perfect ringlets. No sunglasses, but that just made it easier to see the slit-pupiled yellow eyes she’d only caught glimpses of before.

“Crowley,” Ariadne whispered.

Crowley squinted at the horizon – it was like he hadn’t even heard her – and Aziraphale stared at Crowley. First a startled double-take, then a nervous sort of watching. Like he didn’t even recognize Crowley.

Wait. Didn’t recognize _Crowley_?

Aziraphale was nodding, still nervous, and then asked, “Sorry, what was that?” Which was the first hint Ariadne had that Crowley had said anything.

Crowley turned to Aziraphale. “I said, ‘Well, that went down like a lead balloon.’”

And Ariadne blinked. Despite the very twentieth-century metaphor she thought she heard, Aziraphale and Crowley were not speaking modern English. Or Spanish or Italian or German. Or Latin or any dialect of Greek. Or any the dozens of other languages, living and dead, Ariadne had picked up over the years.

But she understood what they were saying. Perfectly.

_What. The. Fuck?_

Curious, Ariadne circled around Aziraphale, standing in front of her parents and watching them closely.

Neither appeared to notice. Aziraphale had turned away from Crowley, once again gazing at the horizon – right through Ariadne – nodding seriously. “Yes, yes. It did, rather.”

For a split second, there was no sound but the whistling of the wind through their robes and feathers. Aziraphale’s and Crowley’s robes and feathers, specifically, Ariadne could feel a bit of a breeze but nothing that would disturb her feathers or even her hair.

Then Crowley started speaking again. “Bit of an overreaction, if you ask me.”

Aziraphale stared sidelong at him, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

Crowley kept speaking. “First offence and everything, and …” Now Crowley looked toward the horizon, puzzled.

He turned back to Aziraphale, and in a low, confused voice continued, “I can’t see what’s so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil anyway.”

Ariadne saw doubt flash across Aziraphale’s face. But he pulled himself together enough to reply, “Well, it must be bad …”

He blinked, slowly, as if realizing there was something he ought to know but didn’t yet.

“Crawly,” said Crowley.

“Wait, _Crawly_?” Ariadne asked. Once again, neither noticed.

“Crawly,” Aziraphale repeated. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have tempted them into it.” Aziraphale tilted his head infinitesimally toward the horizon, flashing Crowley/Crawly a nervous smile.

Crowley (she was going to go with Crowley, it was what she’d known him as so far) tilted his head to one side and managed half a shrug. “They just said, ‘Get up there and make some trouble.’”

“Well, obviously. You’re a demon,” Aziraphale replied, shooting Crowley and up-and-down glance that was trying very hard to be contemptuous and not entirely succeeding. “It’s what you do.”

Crowley did not seem offended. “Not very subtle of the Almighty though. Fruit tree in the middle of a garden, with a ‘don’t touch’ sign. Why not put it on the top of a high mountain? Or on the moon? Makes you wonder what God’s really planning.”

 _You, me, and just about everyone else circa 2019 CE,_ Ariadne thought.

“Best not to speculate,” Aziraphale said, and the way Crowley all but rolled his eyes as he looked away said everything that needed to be said of his opinion of that. “It’s all part of the Great Plan.[1] It’s not for us to understand. It’s,” and here Aziraphale looked the slightest bit smug, as if he was about to lay down the trump card and he knew it, “ineffable.”

Crowley seemed to have not gotten the memo about that being the trump card. “The Great Plan’s _ineffable_?”

“Exactly,” Aziraphale said. “It is beyond understanding and incapable of being put into words.”

It was a very nice definition. Except Crowley wasn’t paying any attention to it. He’d looked down, eyes going wide for a fraction of a second, then narrowing as they fixed on the area near Aziraphale’s waist.

Yet whatever Ariadne thought was about to come next – and she really wasn’t sure she wanted to know what was about to come next – that wasn’t what happened.

“Didn’t you have a flaming sword?” Crowley asked.

_A WHAT?_

“Uh,” Aziraphale started, hands fluttering as he looked away.

“You did!” Crowley insisted. “It was flaming like anything—what happened to it?”

“Uh …” Aziraphale said intelligently, shaking his head in the minutest of motions.

“Lost it already, haven’t you?” Crowley asked, taking his turn to sound smug and clearly reveling in it.

Aziraphale looked down and murmured something Ariadne couldn’t quite catch.

Crowley did, however. His eyes and his mouth were practically perfect circles. “You _what_?”

Except he didn’t sound shocked or angered or even bothered. Instead, he sounded _delighted_.

“I gave it away!” Aziraphale repeated. He did not sound delighted. At all. “There are vicious animals – it’s going to be cold out there – and she’s expecting already, and I said, ‘Here you go, flaming sword, don’t thank me—and don’t let the sun go down on you here.’”

Aziraphale’s worry rolled off him like waves crashing onto the shore. But Crowley did not seem worried. At all. His expression grew more impressed with every word.

“I do hope I didn’t do the wrong thing,” Aziraphale fretted, once again looking out over the horizon.

“Oh, you’re an angel, I don’t think you can do the wrong thing.”

Ariadne narrowed her eyes at Crowley, trying to determine if that was extremely low-key sarcasm or actually sincere.

Aziraphale, however, visibly relaxed – more than Ariadne would have thought possible. “Oh—oh, thank you, oh, thank you.” He let out a sigh. “It’s been bothering me.”

“Well, I’ve been worrying too,” Crowley replied. “What if I did the right thing with the whole eat-the-apple business?”

_Wait._

Ariadne blinked and stared between Crowley and Aziraphale.

The Abrahamics had a story about an apple and a snake. And here Crowley was talking about apples. And not three minutes ago, he’d _been_ a snake. And he’d talked about knowing the difference between good and evil.

And Aziraphale had given someone a flaming sword …

With absolutely no regard for the revelation Ariadne was trying to digest, Crowley continued, “A demon could get into a lot of trouble for doing the right thing.” And he looked troubled, almost as troubled as Aziraphale had – until he broke out in a hint of a grin and the beginning of a chuckle. “Be funny if we both got it wrong, innit? If I did the good thing and you did the bad one?”

For a moment Aziraphale almost seemed to agree. He smiled. He _laughed_.

And then his face fell and his eyes widened and he turned to Crowley with a startled, “No! It wouldn’t be f-funny at all!”

Crowley shrugged. And maybe that might have been the end of it. The end of – of whatever this was, this meeting, this conversation.

Except a few drops of water began to fall from the sky. Ariadne saw them – saw Aziraphale look up and get a few right to the face for his trouble – but she couldn’t feel them. Even when she reached out and tried to catch them as they fell.

But Crowley could. He shivered and edged closer to Aziraphale. And Aziraphale – like it was nothing, without even giving it a second thought – lifted his wing so Crowley could shelter under it.

“Oh,” Ariadne said. They hadn’t told her about this, but now she understood. “Oh, this is your meet-cute, isn’t it?”

They didn’t answer. They didn’t need to. As the rain poured, they faded into the wet and the mist – until there was nothing but Ariadne and a sunny morning in Eden.

And her thoughts. Quite a few of them, whirling around almost too quickly for her to catch.

Almost.

She knew what she had to do now.

Giving her wings a quick flap to stretch them, Ariadne jumped from the wall and coasted down, landing as close as was safe to Asterion.

He hadn’t wandered far from where she had left him, though he had paced a worried loop in the grass. “Hey,” she said. “Sorry about that, I … I have a _lot_ to tell you. I think—I think I know what I need to find in order to go home again.”

Asterion’s eyebrows rose, a quick, “Mmmrph?” escaping him.

“It’s pretty complicated—I’ll explain as we go. But first …” Ariadne took a deep breath. “I don’t suppose you happen to have seen a flaming sword somewhere around here?” 

* * *

[1] The capital letters were quite obvious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter, I PROMISE, we'll find out what's going on with Aziraphale and Crowley et al.
> 
> In the meantime, you know the drill - I love comments, and come hit me up on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/) if you'd like to chat!
> 
> See you on Thursday!


	24. A Devil Put Aside for Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another **mind the tags** chapter. Including some more recent additions to the tags, because, um, well, you try spending months writing a thing that ends up ~230K words and then remember everything you should tag for on the first go.
> 
> The tags you should be minding (and summaries and things you'll want to skip if they'll bother you) are in the end notes.

There were klaxon sirens blaring in every corner of Hell. Dozens of demons had converged upon the Bins. One of them – a tall one with a frog stuck to his head and a thatch of shockingly white hair – had come upon the open dumpster and open safe and let out a howl of rage, followed by a shouted order to fetch the hellhounds.

It was the sort of thing that would bode quite ill for any raiding party that happened to be caught in the Bins. Luckily, their particular raiding party was not in the Bins.

That was about the only lucky thing about the situation, as far as the gods around the gaming table were concerned.

At least until the door to the game room opened and Eris came back in, bowl of popcorn in hand. “Did I miss anything?” she asked.

“Nah. They’re still hiding in the supply closet,” Hermes said, gesturing to the TV that showed Crowley, Aziraphale, Dionysus, Mephistopheles, and Samael huddled in a closet that was too small to fit them all comfortably.

Eris sighed and slid the bowl onto the table. “I don’t know whether to be grateful or disappointed.”

“Be grateful. Or, well, I’m grateful,” Hermes said, grabbing a handful of popcorn. “Because you would have been a pain in the ass if any of them had done something cool and you’d missed it.”

“Truer words.” Eris reached for the keyboard and tapped a few keys; the klaxon wailing grew quieter while the audio feed from the supply closet became louder.

Meanwhile, Athena glanced sidelong at Hermes, tossing popcorn into his mouth. “Are you sure you want to eat that? It’s …” She cast a sidelong glance at Persephone, gaze flickering nervously. “Underworld food.”

“Chthonic deity,” Hermes said. “I can eat what I want down here.”

“As can all of you during the course of this campaign without worrying about having to buy Underworld real estate,” Persephone said. “Certain rules are currently suspended.”

“Awww, sis,” Eris said, “it’s almost like you want us out of your realm and your hair as soon as possible.”

“Precisely,” Hades said.

The popcorn was passed around, each of the gods taking some – even cautious Athena, even fastidious Hera. Together, they kept their eyes on the screen in front of them.

“Do you think any of those geniuses bothered to come up with an exit plan?” Hermes asked after another few minutes of silence (minus the muffled wailing of the sirens and the munching of popcorn) passed.

No sooner had he said that than finally something came through the feed from the supply closet. “I don’t suppose any of us geniuses managed to come up with an exit plan?” Dionysus asked.

“Progress!” Eris cheered.

Meanwhile, Hera shot Hermes an approving, appraising glance. “You know your hero well.”

“We’re very similar breeds of asshole, when you come down to it,” Hermes replied. “Now—”

“Shhhh,” Athena said. “Look!”

Aziraphale had opened his mouth. “You know,” he said, “the humans have an interesting saying when it comes to times like these.”

The hands reaching for the popcorn stilled. The wailing sirens receded even further into the background.

And one by one, the gods leaned forward, collectively holding their breath.

* * *

Samael barely had time to wonder how what passed for human wisdom could possibly do in their situation before Aziraphale continued. “When you’re going through Hell—keep going.”

_What?_

Samael glanced sidelong at Mephistopheles, who looked as confused as she felt. But Crowley’s eyes had gone wide.

“I take it that you don’t mean that metaphorically,” Dionysus said.

“Not at all, dear boy. There’s a lake of fire at the edge of Hell, and we have a boat.”

“And it links up with the—with the—” Crowley rubbed his temples. “Bless it, what’s the name—the fiery river in the Underworld, sounds like you’re about to hack up a lung—”

“The Phlegethon?” Dionysus asked, eyebrows raising. “That …” He narrowed his eyes and turned to Mephistopheles. “What are our odds of getting out the front door?”

“Slim to none,” Mephistopheles said. “Especially since, um, apparently surface trips are forbidden if you don’t have the right paperwork.”

“Surface trips are always forbidden if you don’t have the right paperwork,” Crowley dismissed.

“True, but now they’re enforcing it.”

Crowley blessed fiercely.

“Right. Phlegethon it is then. And hopefully Hades and Persephone won’t nail our asses to the wall for attracting a bunch of demons to their realm – er, present company excepted.” Dionysus unfolded himself from the corner he’d scrunched into and shoved past the rest of them, closer to the door. He glanced at the slim line of light creeping under the threshold. “Do you think that a mouse could fit through that?”

“Oi there, what do you think you’re—” Crowley began, reaching for Dionysus’s shirt.

“One way to find out,” Dionysus said, and with a shake of his shoulders, transformed.

Samael had seen him do it before, and still she had to bite back a yelp. Mephistopheles had less luck, though he was able to muffle his yelp by slapping a hand over his mouth.

Dionysus didn’t even squeak before he shoved his body under the door and into the hallway.

“Dionysus!” Aziraphale shouted, but he had no time to barrel out the door—even without Crowley trying to beat him to it—before the door opened of its own accord.

“Coast is clear. C’mon. Which way is the lake of fire?”

He didn’t get an answer right away. Aziraphale had taken a deep breath, the kind that preceded a lecture. “My _dear_ boy—”

“This way,” said Mephistopheles. He pushed himself to the front, looked right and left, and hurried into the corridor. Samael followed before Crowley or Aziraphale could get any ideas about pausing to lecture Dionysus on the subjects of foolhardiness, unacceptable risk-taking, and general idiocy.

Not that it stopped them – or not that it stopped _Aziraphale_. Outside the sheltering cocoon of the supply closet, the wailing of the sirens was too loud for her to hear what Aziraphale was saying, but she knew that tone. That was the ream-out-the-troops tone, the stop-being-a-hero-before-you-get-us-all-killed tone, the your-life-is-worth-more-than-that-you-idiot tone. It was one Samael had often had cause to use herself, once upon a time—

She almost stopped dead. Because how long ago had that been? No, she hadn’t been in active celestial combat since the first war, but neither had Aziraphale. Yet Aziraphale had brought out that platoon leader tone like he’d only just used it yesterday.

And Samael … when was the last time she’d raked a young soldier over the coals for a well-meaning but incredibly stupid action? She couldn’t remember. She _ought_ to be able to remember. It shouldn’t have been that long ago!

Except it was. At some point, Samael had lost all contact with the young, well-meaning, but incredibly stupid soldiers and instead found herself surrounded by seasoned officers who were far more concerned with strategy and tactics and plans than what it was they were fighting for in the first place.

If she could have spared the attention or the energy, she would have shuddered.

Together they hurried through dark, damp, and smelly corridors, collars turned up and shoulders hunched. Demons passed them on every side, some hurrying toward the sirens, others – actually quite a few – hurrying away from them. Often going faster than they were. One ran past so quickly and so irritably that she blessed them quite thoroughly for their slowness, which left Crowley and Mephistopheles sputtering but which put a warm glow into Samael’s chest.

“Is that sort of thing normal around here?” Samael asked Mephistopheles, falling into step with him.

“What, the blessing?” Mephistopheles asked. “Yeah, if someone’s in that rotten of a mood.” He raised an eyebrow at Samael. “Your lot doesn’t curse people when they get frustrated?”

“No,” Samael said. Then she reconsidered that statement. “Well, at least not out loud. You’re more likely to get a passive-aggressive blessing than an actual curse.”

“Huh,” Mephistopheles murmured, and they kept walking. Until they came to a T-intersection, where Mephistopheles came to a dead stop.

“What?” Samael asked. If it were anyone else, she would have sneered about Mephistopheles not knowing the way. As it was – the way Mephistopheles looked over his shoulder showed that he _did_ know the way and that something else was holding him back.

He caught Crowley’s eye, and Crowley squinted – and then whistled.

“Care to share with the class?” Dionysus asked.

Once again, Crowley and Mephistopheles exchanged glances. Crowley drew the short straw and spoke. “Right, so, see, here’s the thing. Either way we go, we’ll get to the lake of fire. Eventually.”

“But?” Aziraphale asked.

“Going right is faster. A lot faster.”

“So why aren’t we going right?” Dionysus asked.

“Because it means going through the Pit,” Mephistopheles said.

“A pit?” Dionysus asked.

“ _The_ Pit,” Crowley corrected. “S’where the human souls are. And the Damnation department.”

“Which is the biggest department in Hell,” Mephistopheles added.

Aziraphale looked a bit green. Dionysus, however, had narrowed his eyes and put his hands into his pockets, calculating. “So we go right – we get out of here a lot faster, but we have to get through a lot more demons, and we get treated to a show that’s – what, imagine the worst tortures mortals have come up with and multiply it by ten? Twenty? A hundred?”

Crowley snorted. “More like one. Demons aren’t very creative.”

“But we are quick studies,” Mephistopheles pointed out.

“And how much slower is it if we go left?” Dionysus asked.

“Much,” Crowley said.

Dionysus nodded. “Then I say we go right.”

“And I agree,” Samael said. Every eye turned to her in surprise – although Mephistopheles showed the least of it. “The sooner we get out of here, the better. It’s worth the risk of running into a few more demons.”

As for the humans—Samael decided she wouldn’t think about that. After all, every human soul in the Pit had more than earned their way down there. Despite multiple opportunities to repent. That was—well, that was how it was _supposed_ to go, at any rate.

Crowley and Mephistopheles exchanged another set of glances. “I think they’re right,” Mephistopheles said slowly.

Crowley didn’t answer. Instead, he looked at Aziraphale.

Who—smiled? It was a little shaky. But it was sure, and when Aziraphale hooked Crowley’s arm through his, he seemed to be giving comfort, not taking it. “Don’t worry about _me_ , dear boy.”

Crowley’s face turned almost as red as his hair, and he couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes.

“Right,” Dionysus said drily. “Can we get moving?”

They got moving. Though not so quickly that Samael couldn’t fall into step with Mephistopheles and whisper to him, “Is _that_ ,” she nodded to Aziraphale and Crowley, still arm-in-arm, “going to get us in trouble?”

Mephistopheles glanced over his shoulder. “Nah. Lust is a fairly popular sin.”

They didn’t say anything else as they descended the right-hand corridor.

And it was a descent. What started as a slight downward list to the path soon became flight after flight of rickety iron stairs spiraling down. Samael’s boots rang against each step, sounding like a church bell tolling out for the dead.

She didn’t shudder. She _wouldn’t_. She was an archangel; she was made of sterner stuff than that.

As Mephistopheles had promised, the farther they went down, the more demons they passed. Most had their arms full of files and clipboards and barely paid them a second glance. The few who did were more interested in Crowley and Aziraphale’s linked arms than anything Samael was doing or thinking. One even wolf whistled.

And still they descended.

Samael’s steps stopped sounding like tolling bells around the time the screaming started.

If it had just been screaming – or if it had stayed screaming – Samael might have been able to handle it. Might. She’d walked more battlefields than the celestial. She’d played a starring role in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, after all. Lent a hand with the ten plagues. Helped send the walls of Jericho tumbling down. And so on. The point was – she knew what human screaming sounded like. So long as the screaming was for a righteous cause, she could handle it.

The sobbing – which was often overlaid, but not drowned out, by the screaming – well, that was a little harder. Even though there’d been sobbing at Sodom and Gomorrah and Jericho and Heaven knew _Egypt_ —

Samael pushed the thoughts away and kept going.

But worst of all were the sudden moments of silence. Or not-quite-silence. The moments when the sounds faded, only to replaced by chains clanking, gears grinding, whips cracking—

Samael plunged her hands into her pockets, ground her teeth, stared at the ground, wished _very hard_ for a cigarette, and kept going.

Which was why she walked right into Mephistopheles’s back when he came to a dead stop and whispered, “Oh, _no_.”

Her head whipped up and she looked around.

They were standing on one of the dozens of catwalks that crisscrossed the Pit. Mephistopheles was looking over the side. Samael looked too.

What she saw was—well, she told herself that it shouldn’t turn the stomach of a battle-hardened warrior like her. Three stone pillars, three humans chained to them with hands high above their heads, naked to the waist, faces to the pillar and backs—

_Wait._

Those weren’t humans.

Those were demons. With their wings out.

And the wings were chained up, too, rusty iron cuffs forced through flesh and muscle, keeping them on this quasi-material plane—

Samael’s stomach didn’t turn. It dropped.

“What on—” she started.

“Hear ye, hear ye!” A female-shaped demon strutted through the crowd that had gathered around the pillars. She wore a ratty, bright red tailcoat, a jaunty top hat, and skintight knee breeches, and she carried a whip. With a single fluid motion, she leapt to the top of one of the pillars.

“Dearly be-loathéd, we are gathered here today to witness the punishment of the demons Ulgon, Altadoth, and Migthaxad, for the heinous crime,” the demon put a hand over her heart, as if shocked by what she was about to say, “of _an unauthorized surface trip_!”

As the demons below booed and cheered in equal measure, Dionysus’s hiss cut through the chatter. “Why aren’t we moving?”

“Public punishment. Ssssupposed to watch if you’re in the area,” Crowley said through grinding teeth. Aziraphale had pulled him a little closer.

“Is this some sort of compulsion or …”

“We’ll blow our cover if we don’t,” Mephistopheles answered.

Dionysus growled – and without a further word, threw his hood over his head, leaned against the rail, and looked down, the picture of rapt attention.

Samael inched closer to the rail as well – she didn’t see any other option—

“And for this crime, they are sentenced,” the top-hat demon paused, “to a right good plucking!”

 _Plucking?_ Samael thought. They couldn’t mean—they couldn’t _possibly_ mean—

Three other demons materialized from the crowd, each wearing a black executioner’s mask and holding a large pair of tweezers.

Samael nearly retched.

One of the chained demons squealed. “Oh come on! We just wanted to see the girl, same as everyone else!”

“And other demons sneak up to the surface all the _time_!” wailed another chained demon.

“Which is why we’re making an example of you lot!” The top-hat demon cracked her whip, and all three of the chained demons cried out in turn. “We can’t bloody well have everyone chasing after Crowley’s spawn, now, can we?”

Samael’s eyes widened. She heard someone – Dionysus? – suck in a sudden breath. And Aziraphale murmured, “Oh, _no_.”

Samael looked at him, because it was easier, so much easier. But Aziraphale was looking at Crowley, horror clear in every muscle. “This is our fault, isn’t it?”

“What? No. _No_!” Crowley unhooked his arm from Aziraphale’s only to grab him by the shoulders. “Lisssten to me. You want to blame the humanssss on ussss – on _me_ , I tempted – fine. _Fine_. But thissss lot? They made choicessss. The demonssss down there made choicessssss, the demonssss in the crowd made choicessssss, that bloody ringmasssster is making a choice— _you cannot blame yourssssself_ _for their choicesssss_!”

 _Choices …_ Samael thought.

She watched Mephistopheles from the corner of her eye. He stared at scene below them, hand gripping the railing and trembling slightly.

His hand trembled harder when the screaming started to come from below.

And a few things ran through Samael’s mind. Unauthorized surface trip. Just wanted to see the girl. Making choices.

Mephistopheles had made a whole slew of choices that could land him in the same spot as these poor demons – or worse. Much worse.

And Samael …

She looked down to see one of the executioners holding a black feather with a bloody tip aloft.

She could make choices too.

She took the thunder-spear out of her pocket and clicked it open. “If I’m not back in ten minutes,” she said, “go on without me.”

And she flipped over the rail.

* * *

“HOLY SHIT! SHE DID THAT!” Eris shouted, popcorn flying every which way.

Hermes let out a shrill whistle and started to clap. Even Hera looked impressed.

Athena’s eyes had widened; her gaze flickered to the TV that showed the rest of the raiding party, particularly Crowley grabbing Mephistopheles’s elbow and holding him back. “That could be … very foolish …”

“Only if it doesn’t work. Come on, Samael! Kick their asses!” Hermes replied.

The gods around the gaming table leaned forward, rapt, eyes on the screen.

Except one.

Zeus.

He leaned back, catching Hades’s eye. “Tell me, campaign masters – should Samael prove victorious, what are the odds that she might be rewarded for her efforts?”

Hades and Persephone exchanged glances; there was a quick rattle of dice nearly drowned out by Eris’s and Hermes’s carrying on. Finally they concluded their calculations, met gazes, and nodded. “Rapidly approaching one,” Persephone said.

“Excellent,” Zeus said.

Then he took a handful of popcorn and leaned back to watch the show.

* * *

Samael summoned her wings mid-fall, turning what had been a free fall into a controlled dive. Nobody noticed. None of the demons – not even the ones chained to the pillars – thought to look up.

They probably thought they were safe from aerial attack down here. A mistake.

She waited until she could see the whites of the jacketed demon’s eyes. Then she jabbed the spear in her direction.

A bolt of lightning shot out, hit the jacketed demon square in the chest. She shrieked. It might have been drowned out by the screaming demons below.

The harsh crack of thunder was harder to drown out.

The jacket demon fell off the pillar (unconscious? Discorporated? Dead? Did it matter?) and Samael took her place.

She called every shred of Grace she possessed and focused it outward, surrounding her corporation in a golden glow. Her wings flared out behind her, each feather ending in a pinprick of Holy light.

Then she slammed the butt of the spear into the pillar, cracking it down the middle. “I Offer Mercy Once And Only Once,” she said in her Angel of the Lord voice. “Leave Now, And You Shall Suffer No Harm From Me. Stay, And You Shall Face The Wrath Of The Almighty.”

She’d give the demons credit. Half of them turned and ran – including two of the executioners.

The other half …

“Pluck _her_!” shouted a demon on the ground, and when the rest of them roared, Samael took to the air.

The crisscrossing catwalks crowded her, keeping her from moving as much as she’d like—but they also provided cover, of a sort, something she could use to duck and dodge as the demons threw infernal power and Hellfire at her. And they were made of _metal_. One tap with the spear, and the nearest catwalk shot a bolt of lightning that turned three demons into so many smudges of ash on the ground.

Samael wove in and out of the catwalks, jabbing with the spear to pick off demon after demon after demon. The lightning moved quicker than thought, too fast for even infernal reflexes to dodge. And its range was far longer than the demons below could manage with Hellfire.

Though if they were in the air with her, it’d be a different story—

“YOU BLESSED MORONS! _GET HER_!” commanded one of the demons below.

“But she’s got _wings_!” another shouted – or rather whined. “What are supposed to do when she’s up there?”

“DO I HAVE TO THINK OF EVERYTHING? SO DO YOU!!” The first demon’s wings snapped out, black and impossibly glossy—

Samael jabbed the spear hard, and thunder shook every catwalk as a bolt of lightning shot out and burned a hole clean through the first demon’s wing. He collapsed to his knees, howling in agony.

A second jab silenced the scream.

The number of demons below her dwindled, from several dozen to less than twenty, to less than ten, to less than five, not counting the ones chained to the pillars. The ground was littered with smoking, sparking demon corporations.

Finally only one remained, curled up in a ball on the ground and clutching her lightning-scorched knee to her torso, crying in what looked like pain.

Samael stayed in the air for one wingbeat, then two, then three.

No other demons emerged from the catwalks or the corridors emptying into the lowest level of the Pit. No other sound was heard but the sobs of the curled-up demon and the whimpers of the chained-up ones.

Slowly, Samael lowered herself to the ground, close but not too close to the sobbing demon. She put the point of her spear under the demon’s chin.

The sobs cut off with a gasp.

“Get Up,” Samael said.

Slowly, the demon shuddered and stumbled to her feet – or, well, foot; she didn’t put any weight on the injured knee.

“I Said I Would Give You One And Only One Chance At Mercy,” Samael said. The tip of her spear moved closer to the demon’s throat, just grazing it.

The demon hiccupped, her tears flowing faster.

Samael tilted the angle of the spear—

And let it fall. But not too far. “I Lied. _Go_.”

The demon didn’t need to be told twice. Still gasping and sobbing, she turned and hobbled off as quickly as she could.

Only when the demon’s back disappeared into the darkness of the corridor did Samael let her spear-arm fall all the way. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let go of her Grace.

She expected for her energy to leave her in a rush, for her breath to come in pants, for a stitch to start in her side. These days, fighting with Grace did wonders for her endurance as the fight went on, but there was always hell to pay after—

Except it didn’t. Instead of a wave of exhaustion, Samael felt a warm glow of calm and renewal bubble up in her like a spring.

_What the—_

A sound like thunderclaps cut that thought down in its tracks. Samael whirled, spear out—

And came face-to-face with Zeus. Clapping.

“Well _done_ , Samael.” He stepped forward, and Samael saw that he was translucent, glowing white like lightning around the edges. “Cutting down dozens of enemies by yourself is no mean feat.”

Samael shrugged, or started to. It was all part of the job, really. One didn’t get to be an archangel without—

“But more importantly,” Zeus continued, “you used your superior strength not to destroy, but to protect. And for that, you shall be rewarded with protection.”

Zeus snapped his fingers. In his left hand, a circular shield appeared. The shield was leather and almost completely plain but for the golden tassels on every side and the head of a snaky-haired woman in the middle.

“The aegis,” he said. “Formed from the skin of my nurse Amalthea’s goat, later further strengthened with the head of Medusa. It will protect you and those you protect for the duration of your quest.”

“Ah,” Samael said, and then her mouth continued without checking with the rest of her for permission, “so you’ll be wanting this back when we’re done.”

“Even so,” Zeus said with a smile. He held out the shield.

Samael took it. A spark like lightning jumped from the shield to her arm—and then the shield was real, solid and heavy. Samael shifted her arm through the straps—

And it wasn’t heavy anymore. Still real. Still very solid. But it fit on her arm like it was made to go there, and when Samael gave an experimental turn of that arm, the shield moved fluidly. It would protect what she needed it to.

Samael turned back to Zeus. “Thank you.”

He had faded in the few seconds she took to admire the shield. But he still nodded. “I give you nothing more than what you have earned. And perhaps …” He smirked. “A bonus gift, from a son of the God of Time.”

 _Eh?_ Samael thought, even as Zeus snapped his fingers again and disappeared.

In the same breath, there was a rattle of chains and a series of thumps—Samael turned to the pillars to see that the demons who had been chained to them were chained no longer, and two of them had fallen to their knees.

 _Oh. Time. He gave me a bit of time._ Which was good—she had no idea how long it would have taken her to undo those chains, and the last thing she needed—

Samael stepped forward, intent on having a look at the demons’ wings. But one of the demons looked over her shoulder, saw Samael advancing, and yelped, scooting away as quickly as she could.

Samael stopped dead. “What? No, no—I’m trying to _help_ ; I’m not here to hurt you—”

“Maybe you should leave the helping to us?”

Samael whirled—

And there was Mephistopheles, coming in for a landing. Samael goggled. Except for the attack on Ariadne in the alley, she’d never seen his wings before, and she hadn’t been exactly looking then. Now, she couldn’t understand why he always hid them. Glossy and black and sleek, they almost glowed even in the dim fluorescent lights—

As soon as Mephistopheles’s feet touched the ground, the wings were gone, and Mephistopheles wouldn’t meet her eyes. Instead he looked turned to the demons. “We do want to help.”

“Get you patched up enough to scarper, at least,” Crowley added. He was the next to land. His wings were bigger than Mephistopheles’s, more powerful, fashioned like a predator’s. He didn’t put them away as quickly.

One of the demons – not the one who’d scooted away from her – squinted. “Demon Crowley?” she whispered.

Crowley took off the hat he was still wearing. “The one and only.”

“But why are _you_ helping us?” asked the third demon, even as he brought his wings forward for Mephistopheles to inspect.

“Because at heart he really is a good person,” Aziraphale said.

“Basssstard,” Crowley muttered – but not before tossing a crooked smile over his shoulder.

The last of their party to touch down was Dionysus, and he did so clinging to a thick vine that disappeared as soon as he let go. “I’ve got wine if any of you need it,” he said, stepping forward with a wineskin in hand.

“Why would we need wine?” Mephistopheles asked.

“Antiseptic,” Crowley said. “And we won’t – demons don’t get infections. But thanks.”

With that, Crowley and Mephistopheles got to work. The plucked feathers would have to grow back on their own – no miracles could help that along – but their healing gifts could take care of a great deal. Samael started forward to assist—

Or at least that was her intent, but Aziraphale’s hand on her elbow stayed her. “I think we’d do more harm than good.”

Samael remembered the bookshop, catching a glimpse of Aziraphale’s glowing hand on Crowley’s bleeding shoulder and the way the demon had howled when Aziraphale made contact. “Right,” she said, and stepped back.

So she and Aziraphale stood aside, useless, while Crowley and Mephistopheles put the demons back together. Dionysus circled their group like a caged lion, and after thirty seconds of inactivity, Samael joined him. It wouldn’t do to get complacent.

Soon Mephistopheles and Crowley had the demons ready to move, and Samael assumed that would be the end of it. The demons would run off one way, they’d run off another way, and they’d probably never—

It wasn’t. One of the demons – the one who’d recognized Crowley – came up to Samael and tapped her on the arm. “I just—” She twisted her hands together. “I just wanted to say thank you. For saving our skins. Or wings. Technically.”

Samael blinked—

And grinned. “Well, try not to get caught next time,” she said with a shrug. “I won’t always be here to save you.”

The demon grinned back. Her teeth were sharp – alarmingly so – but her eyes were more full of mischief than malice. “We’ll do our worst. Thanks again!”

With that, she ran off with her companions, hopefully to the surface or to the deeper warrens of Hell or someplace, anyplace that they wouldn’t end up back in the crosshairs of their sadistic bosses.

Samael smiled at their retreating backs, the warm glow that had filled her when she let go of her Grace returning tenfold—

It couldn’t last.

The doors at the opposite end of the Pit banged open, and out spilled a host of demons and hellhounds – with Hastur leading the charge.

“ _CROWLEY_!” he bellowed.

“And there goes our cover,” Dionysus groaned.

* * *

As he took several hasty steps backward, Crowley found himself wishing for a plant mister. Or any kind of spray bottle, really. Or actually, if he was going to wish for things, why not wish for a super soaker? Put some Holy Water in one of those things and the demons would run like, dare he say it, hell.

Of course, he didn’t actually _have_ any of those things, and even if he had, getting a hold of Holy Water down here would be a bit difficult, so all he could have done with any of them was bluff.

What he _had_ was a Wabbajack, and now was as good a time as any to figure out just what it could do.

Crowley reached into the pocket dimension, grabbed the Wabbajack, and pulled it out with an unholy yell that he _really_ hoped made it seem like he knew what he was doing.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” said one of the demons behind Hastur.

Crowley decided that demon would make for an excellent first target. He waved the Wabbajack—

A bolt of ice shot from it and—missed? No, maybe not—there on the floor was a squiggle that looked a bit like a stylized sigma.

“Is that all you’ve got?” Hastur laughed. He stepped onto the squiggle.

It exploded. In ice. Shards of it leaping from the ground and implanting themselves into any demon or hellhound unlucky enough to be in range.

And then there was Hastur—who was knocked back by the explosion, covered in ice, shivering from head to toe—

“ _Come on_!” shouted Dionysus, and suddenly there was a hand on Crowley’s collar dragging him back, spinning him around, and pushing him forward. “We need to _go_! SAMAEL!”

“What?” Samael demanded.

“Can you get a light show going?”

Samael blinked. “What—”

“The catwalks! The spear! Get some lightning going!”

Now she goggled. “That could just as easily hit us—”

“It won’t!” Dionysus grinned – and maybe Crowley was losing it, and maybe he was seeing things, but he could have sworn that Dionysus’s eyes were not only glowing burgundy, but flashing, a little bit—

_Like lightning?_

Well, he was a son of Zeus.

“Trust me!”

Samael didn’t say a word—but with a shout, she stabbed the spear upward, again and again, sending lightning dancing from catwalk to catwalk. Thunder boomed all around, shaking the Pit and making Crowley’s ears ring hard enough that he seriously considered turning that sense off.

But Dionysus was louder. “Now let’s _GO_!”

And they ran – a lightning storm at their back, Hell-only-knew-what in front of them.

Crowley grabbed Aziraphale’s elbow – Samael and Mephistopheles were in front; they were fine – and tossed a glance over his shoulder.

Dionysus was behind, walking backwards, waving his hands in complicated spirals. And the lightning didn’t go anywhere near them. He didn’t turn around until they’d exited the chamber and slammed the door behind him.

They’d emerged into yet another dank, humid corridor. This one listing upward – right, the lake of fire wasn’t on the lowest level of the Pit.

Not that it mattered. They had running to do.

 _There’s no way all of that will hold them back for long_ , was Crowley’s first thought as he ran. His second was, _For Go—Sa—Somebody’s sake, I really need to get to the gym more._ He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to run so far or so fast—

His third thought was much more helpful.

_ANTHONY J. CROWLEY, YOU ARE A DEMON! THE LAWS OF BIOLOGY DON’T BLOODY WELL APPLY! YOU WILL RUN LIKE HELL BECAUSE YOU DON’T WANT TO IMAGINE WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF HELL CATCHES UP!_

As far as internal pep talks went, it wasn’t a bad one. And imagining that he wasn’t out of breath or suffering from a stitch in his side or not entirely sure how to control his legs and run at the same time wasn’t even hard.

The problem was Aziraphale—still on Crowley’s arm, or rather, Crowley was still holding onto him—who was starting to pant and slow—

Crowley picked up speed, dragging Aziraphale along with him. It shouldn’t have been hard to imagine a faster Aziraphale, except a sad, broken, _You go too fast for me, Crowley_ kept playing in his head on repeat.[1]

Time to bring out the big guns, then. “Come _on_ , angel,” he said, tugging Aziraphale forward. “If Samael-the-chain-smoking-archangel can manage a four-minute-mile, _you_ can bloody well keep up!”

Aziraphale shot him a dirty look, but the dirty look was all Crowley needed to imagine a faster Aziraphale – and who knew, maybe Aziraphale’s determination to put one over on Crowley helped too.

Behind them, Crowley heard large metal doors bang open, then the barking of hellhounds, then an unmistakable voice bellow, “ _GET THEM_!”

_Shit!_

He dared a look over his shoulder—but he couldn’t use the Wabbajack; Dionysus was in the way—

Dionysus had turned around again; he waved a hand and vines erupted from the floor between Hastur’s army and the hellhounds. They reached for the demons and the hounds, twining around ankles, grabbing at trailing coats and loose pant legs—

Hastur snarled and called forth Hellfire—it could _only_ be Hellfire—and shot a stream of it at the vines.

Dionysus howled and doubled over, like he’d been punched in the gut.

“Dionysus!” Aziraphale shouted, turning back—

And all Crowley could think was _no no no no no—angel fire Hellfire ANGEL—_

With one hand he pulled Aziraphale back; with the other he waved the Wabbajack. And shouted. Something. He couldn’t have told anyone what it was, or even what language it was in. If it was in a language at all.

Jets of ruby-red power shot from the Wabbajack, one after another. And hit demons, one after another. One demon bellowed with rage and jumped on another demon, hitting him for all she was worth. Three more were simply tossed back. Another turned into—a crab? And one disappeared entirely.

But Hastur kept coming – and he had a lot of demons with him.

Crowley let go of Aziraphale long enough to grab Dionysus by the collar and haul him back. He then pushed him to Aziraphale. “ _Go_ – both of you, just _go_! _SAMAEL_!”

“ _Now_ what?” Samael asked.

“Could use a little help back here!”

Samael looked back—Crowley heard her say something _very_ un-angelic indeed, and she leapt into the air. In a second lightning was whizzing over Crowley’s head, crack after crack of it, felling their pursuers left and right.

But not Hastur.

Crowley kept waving the Wabbajack. And it seemed to work. One demon exploded; one turned away to chase a rabbit that had come from nowhere. But then there was the one whose lightning-burn and rather alarming skin condition healed when the Wabbajack power hit it, and the one that turned into an exploding chicken and then turned back. And then there was the one demon that Samael had already dispatched who got up and charged toward them with twice the fury as before. It took three direct lightning hits before that one went down again.

And then there was the one demon who turned into cheese. _Cheese_. Even if there had been anyone around to ask, Crowley was absolutely not going to ask.

Then more vines appeared. These didn’t just grow out of the floor. They came from the walls and the ceiling. And they grew _fast_ – actively reaching for any parts of any demon they could find, tangling around them like demented spiderwebs, squeezing and binding demons where they stood.

Crowley looked over his shoulder to see Dionysus stumbling between Aziraphale and Mephistopheles. One hand was still holding his stomach, the other waving in the air.

But his eyes. His eyes were what drew the attention. Burgundy, glowing, narrowed, _raging_ —

And that was Crowley’s mistake. Looking back. Because it meant he wasn’t looking at Hastur.

“HA!”

A meaty hand had locked around the Wabbajack.

“Got you.” Hastur grinned. It reached all the way up to his pitch-black eyes, and it was terrifying.

Or it would have been, if Crowley had allowed himself to think about being terrified.

He didn’t.

“AAAAAAAAAAH!!” he shouted, because every good last-ditch-attempt at saving oneself had to come with a shout, and he gripped the Wabbajack with both hands and _swung_.

It shouldn’t have worked. Hastur had twice his demonic strength any day of the week.

But it didn’t have to work, because the Wabbajack responded. Crowley had just a sliver of a second to see the triumph in Hastur’s eyes turn into terror—

And then there was no Hastur anymore.

There was, however, a pastry at Crowley’s feet. Something like a bunt cake or maybe a cinnamon roll, slathered in a thick cream-cheese icing.

His only explanation for what he did next was that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Oi, angel!” He swooped down and picked up the pastry. “Feeling peckish?”

Aziraphale looked over his shoulder. “ _Crowley_!”

He almost laughed. He really almost did. Except there was a sudden howl, and Crowley turned around to see no fewer than five hellhounds barreling right for him—

_Oh shi—_

Something plucked the pastry from Crowley’s hand.

A voice that sounded a lot like Aziraphale’s shouted, “ _Fetch_ , boys!”

The pastry sailed over Crowley’s head.

It sailed over the hellhounds’ heads.

Five quivering noses followed its progress.

And in that moment, the hellhounds became—dogs. Large dogs. Mean ones. Ones who would tear your arm off as soon as look at you.

But dogs who loved treats, and loved games, and couldn’t hope to resist the treat and the game they’d just been offered.

The hellhounds turned and ran after the pastry. Into what remained of Hastur’s demon horde.

Crowley didn’t have time to watch the ensuing chaos. Aziraphale had spun him around and started to drag him forward. “Come _on_ ; let’s go!”

Crowley went. Laughing every step of the way, but he went. “You are _such_ a bastard, angel!”

“Yes, yes, I know! Now less laughing, more running!”

It was good advice – so to borrow a line from that annoyingly gloomy play Crowley had made into a hit to please one bastard angel, Crowley suited the action to the word and ran.

* * *

“ _Psychic damage_?” Hermes was shouting at Hades and Persephone. “What do you mean, the Hellfire gave Dionysus _psychic damage_? We’re not Abrahamics! We should be immune to that shit!”

“We’re still trying to get a read on the situation,” Persephone said, staring at her dice with no small amount of consternation. “Honestly, I’m not even sure if psychic damage is the right term to use …”

“Then what _would_ be?!”

By rights, the ensuing argument should have attracted the attention of all the gods. This was not merely a disputed point in a game; this was a potential threat that could affect them all. Zeus and Athena had leaned forward accordingly, though both had yet to join the conversation.

Two of the gods, however, had their eyes still fixed on the screens.

“That was rather impressive of Crowley,” remarked Hera as the sweet roll went flying over the hellhounds’ heads. “Turning a Duke of Hell into a pastry and all …” She raised an eyebrow at Eris. “Don’t you think it deserves a reward?”

“Nah,” Eris said, tossing some popcorn into her mouth. “That was the Wabbajack, not him. Crowley’s got a bigger show in him; I know it. Also—the most epic part of that was Aziraphale throwing the-sweet-roll-formerly-known-as-Hastur to the dogs, which, by the way?” Eris nudged Hera with a grin. “ _Dick_ move. I can see why you picked him.”

Hera sighed. “Dear, don’t be vulgar.”

“If you insist. Popcorn?” Eris held the bowl out to Hera.

And Hera smiled. “Of course. Thank you.”

Popcorn safely in hand, mother and daughter leaned back to watch the show, letting the arguments of their relatives recede into the background.

* * *

They didn’t run into any more hostiles between throwing Hastur to the hellhounds and reaching the doors to the lakeshore. In hindsight, Crowley would realize he should have seen that for the incredibly suspicious thing it was long before he did.

As it was, he was too busy worrying about Dionysus – who refused to stop or slow down so Aziraphale could have a look at him, insisting he was _fine_ – and running to think too far ahead or too far behind. Crowley had focused his entire force of will and every shred of imagination he possessed into getting to those doors without anything else going wrong, and perhaps it is not so shocking that it worked.

Of course, as soon as they burst through the doors, everything turned to shit.

The lakeshore looked deserted. Usually it was crowded with demons lying half-naked on the rocks, frolicking in the fires, or attempting to play beach-themed games. Now … the shore was empty. Nothing and no one but basalt rocks, the flickering flames, and them.

Except … the lakeshore wasn’t deserted. Not fully. There was one other person, standing with his back to them. He had slicked-back black hair and wore a white wifebeater, white jeans, a black belt, and a studded metal arm ring. And when he turned around, he sported possibly the most eighties mustache to escape the twentieth century.

He smirked. “Well, hello, darlings.”

Mephistopheles choked. Samael hissed and flared her wings. Aziraphale had his head tilted in confusion, and Dionysus was the first to speak. “What the—”

He didn’t finish. But not because the figure in white had anything to say about it.

Because _Crowley_ did.

“No. No—you know what, _no_. _Heaven_ no!” Crowley strode forward. “You don’t get to do that. Freddie is not down here, and you don’t get to wear his face – _the face he wore for Live Aid_ – to make a bloody point! I don’t care _what_ the humans say, sexual proclivities have nothing to do with who ends up where – _and YOU should know that better than anyone_! And most importantly—”

Crowley took a deep breath so he could really hammer this bit home.

“ _Freddie was a Zoroastrian, you prat_!”

There was a part of Crowley’s mind, the part that was in charge of things like _prudence_ and _caution_ and _not dying_ , that was looking on in horror. The rest of it – the much larger part of it – was far past the point of caring.

Because the thing was, he was coming off six thousand years of walking a tightrope of fear and longing – thirty-eight hundred of which were spent with absolute terror humming in the back of his brain, terror not for himself or even for Aziraphale, but for another being, an innocent, who he couldn’t even let himself think about because that was the same thing as putting a target on her back. And it had all culminated in a decade plus of absolute hell, worse than most of the decades he’d spent _in_ Hell. And then there was the nightmare of the Apocalypse-that-wasn’t, of thinking Aziraphale was _dead_ and being sure the world was going to end, of standing up to the devil Himself armed with nothing more than a tire iron, of somehow surviving _that_ only to know that it didn’t matter, he was still a dead man walking – and then the mad scheme to help Aziraphale survive what Heaven had coming for him and maybe even stay alive himself. Which _worked_ , somehow, but that wasn’t the point—the point was that he barely got a second to breathe afterwards before a Greek goddess waltzed into Aziraphale’s bookshop, followed not long afterwards by the innocent he’d spent so long not thinking about – and hard on _her_ heels were his former colleagues and Aziraphale’s, and then he got shot and they had to run, and for a little while they thought they were safe, or safe enough, but they were wrong, because the second they poked their noses out that innocent got discorporated, and _he’d thought she was dead—_

Really, it was a miracle that Crowley hadn’t reached his breaking point long before this. So he hefted the Wabbajack, tapped it against his palm, and dared the being before him to continue wearing a dead human’s face like he had any fucking right to it whatsoever.

Not-Freddie watched the bouncing Wabbajack with an amused smile. But he shrugged. “As you wish, darling.”

And he changed.

Before them stood a tall, rather thin man, still with dark hair, but now with wide-set blue eyes and high cheekbones. _This_ face made Mephistopheles yelp.

But all Crowley could think was that the weird-looking face looked familiar, somehow. Crowley knew he had seen it before, many times; he just couldn’t place _where_ —

Luckily Dionysus could. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Benedict fucking _Cumberbatch_?”

“I don’t know who that is,” said Samael, “but that isn’t him.” Her wings spread in an attack stance even as she lifted the spear and raised her shield. “ _That_ is Satan.”

Satan smiled. It was horrible. “Samael.” Oh, Crowley knew that tone. He _hated_ that tone. It was the affable, chummy tone that Satan only let loose when he was feeling his least affable. The tone that meant that someone was about to get turned into chum and fed to the sharks. “I see you’re as pleasant and even-tempered as ever.”

Samael had no reply, instead rolling her shoulders and adjusting her stance.

Unfortunately, Dionysus did have a reply. “No shit, Sherlock.”

Satan’s gaze snapped to Dionysus, and for a moment—just a moment—the mask almost slipped. But soon it was firmly in place again, held there by a smug smirk. “So once again she sends the youngest of twelve against me. Tell me, where’s your flint sickle, boy?”

Dionysus’s eyes went wide, then narrowed, then he curled his hands and the ground started to shake just seconds before it erupted in vine after vine after vine—

Satan cast a nonchalant glance at the vines. And smirked. He raised his hand lazily. Crowley knew before he saw the smoke that what came from it would be Hellfire.

He wanted to shout, to get Dionysus _and Aziraphale who was standing right next to him_ out of the way before Satan could let that loose.

But he didn’t have enough time.

Because Samael leapt in front of Dionysus, raised her shield, and caught the stream of Hellfire in it.

It was a bloody goatskin shield. It should have gone up like a matchstick.

It didn’t. Instead the shield caught and held the Hellfire, and even though Samael ground her teeth and planted her feet and tensed every muscle with the effort, she kept that shield up and the Hellfire where it belonged.

Crowley took that opportunity to shove Aziraphale and Dionysus out of the way, putting himself between them – because Satan could throw Hellfire at him all day and _he’d_ be fine; _they_ wouldn’t be. And Mephistopheles seemed to be thinking the same thing, except in regards to Samael—

Not that it mattered. Satan looked nonplussed for half a blink before his expression turned bored. The Hellfire stream stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

Then with roughly the same effort it would take to brush away a fly, Satan waved his hand and sent Samael tumbling arse-over-elbow.

“ _Samael_!” Mephistopheles shouted, running after her.

“ _Crowley_!” Aziraphale howled in the same tone, closer to him—but that wouldn’t do, so Crowley imagined a barrier between him and the angel, visible, invisible, he didn’t care, it just had to be strong enough to keep Aziraphale out of harm’s way—

He must have succeeded, because he heard Aziraphale thump into it and yell, “Crowley! What are you _doing_?”

“Keeping _you_ from getting embarrassed!” Crowley called back, and he almost laughed, because wasn’t this just them all over? He really—

That thought stopped in its tracks.

Satan was smiling.

And Crowley realized what he’d just done. With Samael out of commission – Mephistopheles worried about her – and Aziraphale and Dionysus held back by a wall of his own devising, that left just one person to face Satan.

And that person was him.

_Oh. Shit._

Satan sighed and shook his head. “Crawly, Crawly—”

“That’s not my name,” Crowley replied – or at least his mouth did; his brain couldn’t recall having been asked for input on that one.

Satan fixed him with an unblinking stare that was only just this side of kill-you-where-you-stand. “Crawly,” Satan repeated. “What _am_ I going to do with you?”

“You can do whatever you like to Crawly, but my friends and I would really appreciate it if you would just move a bit to the left and let us leave.” It was official: Crowley’s brain had left the building.

Now Satan’s eyes narrowed. “Do you really think you can stand against me?”

“I mean, honestly? Yeah,” Crowley replied, tossing the Wabbajack from hand to hand like he actually believed a single word coming out of his mouth. “If I’m recalling correctly, an eleven-year-old managed it. Can’t be _that_ hard.

“Or maybe it’s like, you know, those great big mountains off in the Himalayas or what-have-you. Everest and Kilimanjaro and the rest. Thousands of years they stand there, nobody can climb ‘em, and then one bugger goes and does it, and the next thing you know? Everybody’s grandmother is doing it over a long weekend.” Crowley forced a shrug. “I have no problem being the grandmother in this scenario, by the way.”

Satan’s nostrils flared and his eyes widened ever so slightly. “You dare bring up my son and what you did to him?”

“Hey, I didn’t—”

“Oh, it was you.” Satan let out a short, mirthless chuckle. “Please. You were always the most persuasive of my demons, Crawly.”

“That’s not my—”

“But,” Satan steamrolled over the objection like it hadn’t even been uttered, “do you know – unlike some people – I can forgive even that?” He smiled. Crowley almost shuddered. “Unlike some people, I am merciful. Compassionate. _Kind_ , even. Crawly—”

“I _said_ , that’s not my—”

“—I would be more than happy to welcome you back into the fold, greet you with open arms, the prodigal son returned, perhaps even promote you – I do find myself missing a couple of dukes – even offer amnesty for your _friend_ ,” Satan’s eyes flickered past Crowley and Crowley knew he was looking at Aziraphale, “if, in return, you would do just one thing for me.”

Crowley didn’t ask what. Why should he? Satan had nothing that he wanted.

One corner of Satan’s mouth turned up in a snarl, though it was smoothed away almost as quickly as it appeared. “Come now, Cr—my friend. Remember who you’re talking to.” Satan spread his arms out in an absurd mockery of a hug. “The one who always listened to you. Who never, ever discouraged your questions. Who _understood_. Who _appreciated_ your cleverness, your cunning, that boundless imagination. The one who, time and time again, overruled his own handpicked lieutenants because he understood your potential. Who gave you the juiciest of assignments, because there was no one else who could do them half so well …

“Yet you held out on me.” Satan let his arms fall. “When you once again defied the possible and rewrote the rules of the universe – you not only didn’t come to me for aid, you actively hid your little miracle from me.”

Crowley’s stomach dropped to the vicinity of his feet, and perhaps a bit lower.

“Tell me,” Satan’s eyes narrowed, “why did I have to find out about your daughter from a two-bit tempter who was just clever enough to go poking through the files of the most useless of the Olympians?”

Crowley found himself blinking. “Are you kidding me?”

“Oh, I understand why you’d hide her from Heaven,” Satan said, waving his hand as if it didn’t even matter, as if nothing mattered at all but what he had to say. “We all know what happened after the Nephilim – all those little bodies bobbing in the water – _you can’t kill kids_ , except, well, clearly you _can_ when you plan to let some light refract through some raindrops afterward. So no, I can see why you wouldn’t want Heaven to find out about her. But _me_? Your only friend, your only supporter—”

“Are you out of your fucking _mind_?” Crowley shouted. “ _I did it to keep her away from you_!”

Satan stopped. He blinked. “Crawly.”

“ _That’s not my name_!”

Now Satan inhaled sharply. His hands flexed once, then relaxed. “Then would you prefer—”

What came out of Satan’s mouth next is best described as a collection of syllables that had once been very, very familiar to Crowley. Once upon a time, they’d followed another collection of syllables that could be loosely (very loosely) translated as _Let there be,_ and they had been the first thing Crowley had ever heard – the syllables that washed over him as he was pulled from the ether, as he went from being a _nothing_ to a _somebody_.

Those syllables had once been as familiar to him as his own name, because once upon a time – that time when he had hung stars and sung Her praises and perhaps asked a few too many ill-advised questions and _definitely_ hung around the wrong people – they had _been_ his name.

And Crowley had heard rumors about this – claiming that Satan, and only Satan, still knew everyone’s name, their original name, and that if you were _very_ unlucky and he was _very_ annoyed with you, he’d call you by it. And the reaction to that tended to fall into the wailing-and-gnashing-of-teeth territory, to the point where demons who were sentenced to a few centuries of torture in the Pit or even extinction afterwards were said to go to their punishments weeping with relief and praising Satan’s mercy – because, you know, he could have said that name _again_.

Except none of that happened to Crowley. Probably because. Well.

“Yeah, that’s not it, either,” Crowley said – and when Satan was staring at him in goggle-eyed shock, he waved the Wabbajack, brandished it, and slam it into the ground, yelling “YAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”[2]

What Crowley’s plan was when he did that was not something he would be able to articulate later. He was hoping the Wabbajack would come up with something, really. A pastry would have been excellent, but he would have taken cheese. Or some ice. Or even Satan just being pushed back a few feet. He was not picky.

He was not expecting the massive explosion.

He _doubly_ wasn’t expecting the way it flared out in every direction and did absolutely no harm to anyone other than Satan.

And while he triply wasn’t expecting Satan’s absurdly high-pitched, “AAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!” as he was thrown back into the lake of fire – to say nothing of the way the flames lapped at him eagerly and pulled him down – Crowley would be lying if he said he hadn’t enjoyed it.

Well. He certainly enjoyed the _memory_. At the time it happened, he was in too much shock for active enjoyment.

And maybe that was what saved him. Because he was too shocked to have the mental energy left over for things like maintaining the wall that was supposed to keep Dionysus and Aziraphale safe and out of harm’s way. Which meant that someone competent could take over.

“CROWLEY!” That was Aziraphale, grabbing him by the shoulders, spinning him around, and kissing him— _hard_ , like he’d been afraid he’d never get another chance—and Crowley couldn’t even enjoy it, because it was over almost as soon as it had begun and Aziraphale was holding him at arm’s length, eyes wild, demanding, “Never, _ever_ do that again!”

“S-sure,” Crowley heard himself say. “Whatever you say. Er. Do what—”

“Now _come on_! We need to go! Samael, Mephistopheles—”

“Here,” Samael said. She was leaning on Mephistopheles, who had her arm slung over his shoulder and somehow hadn’t collapsed.

Aziraphale nodded once, and grabbing Crowley’s hand, reached into his jacket pocket and flung Hera’s boat toward the lake.

That should not have worked. The boat should have run aground or landed upside-down or _something_. But the boat landed right-side-up on the fiery lake, grew to the size of a Greek galley, and even produced a handy gangplank to let them all up with flames getting too close to any angelic tootsies or trailing coats.

“Come on!” Aziraphale shouted, and he led the way onto the boat, dragging Crowley along with him, Mephistopheles and Samael limping along after, and Dionysus bringing up the rear.

“Right,” Dionysus said as soon as he’d hopped onto the ship, “I don’t suppose any of us knows how to—”

He never finished that sentence. The boat started moving, faster than thought, fast enough that even the literal speed demon Crowley was knocked off-balance and found himself collapsing to one of the conveniently placed benches.

He wasn’t alone on the bench – and not just because he’d managed to pull Aziraphale down too.

“Crowley! That was _epic_!”

At the sight of a glowing, translucent Eris seated beside him, Crowley damn near jumped out of his skin—and had Aziraphale not landed half on top of him, that might have been literal.

Not that Eris seemed to notice. Well, no, to judge by her gleeful smile she certainly _noticed_ , but it didn’t faze her. “You used a Wabbajack on fucking Satan! Loki is going to shit himself when hears about this. I am _so_ proud.”

“Uh. Thanks?”

“But!” Eris raised one finger. “I didn’t come all this way to gloat – or well, preview how I’m going to be gloating for at least the next century. I came,” and now Eris’s face turned almost solemn, almost serious, “to reward you for that mighty display of—ah, screw it.

“ _Crowley_.” Eris put both hands on his shoulders, and Crowley almost felt it. “You fucking stuck it to the Man, and when you did that, you became your own man—or de-man, technically, I mean, if you want to make a pun about it— _anyway_. You embraced your inner chaos Muppet, and you triumphed. And as a reward, you get to cause more chaos.

“Behold!” Eris reached into—somewhere—there was absolutely no way anything she was wearing had pockets big enough to hold what she pulled out. Which looked like a standard tin can to Crowley. “The Can o’ Worms!”

“Ooooooh?” Crowley said, and plucked said can from Eris’s grip even before she could formally offer it to him. It looked like something out of a cartoon. The label on the can had _Can o’ Worms_ written on it in big bubbly letters, and there was an illustration of a woman-shaped being opening said can in the general direction of a man-shaped being, who was flailing away from the veritable flood of worms that were flying in his direction.

“Use it well, young Padawan. And by well, I mean _badly_. And on that note—” Eris cast a glance around the rest of the boat and waved. “ _Ciao_!”

And she was gone. And Crowley would have fallen to investigating his prize and just imagining the fun he could have with it—

Except Aziraphale plucked it from his hands and spirited it into one pocket. “Absolutely not.”

“ _Hey_!”

“You are not to be trusted with that, dear boy. Certainly not in confined quarters.”

“But—but—” It was probably a sign of how much the fight had taken out of him that Crowley was stuttering now. “But Eris gave it to me! And—and Mephistopheles didn’t take Samael’s shield away from her!”

“Well, of course not. I like living,” Mephistopheles said.

That was not what Crowley had been expecting to hear. And to judge by the way Mephistopheles’s eyes widened and he sucked in breath, that had not been what he was expecting to say.

Not that it mattered. Four sets of laughter rang out – starting with Samael’s, who guffawed and draped herself over Mephistopheles. “Oh, Mephistopheles—never change.”

“A toast!” That was Dionysus, clambering over Samael and Mephistopheles’s bench to sit on Crowley’s other side. He snapped his fingers and a wine glass appeared in each of their hands, followed by a wineskin in his. “To going through Hell and coming out in one piece!”

“Hear, hear!” Aziraphale laughed. The glasses were filled, and each of them drank – and they followed up that drink with another, because really, that first drink might end up lonely down there in their stomachs, and that wouldn’t do at all.

“S-so,” Mephistopheles said, once they were all on their third glass, “Now what?”

And to once again paraphrase that exceedingly gloomy play Crowley had turned into a hit – well, that was the question, wasn’t it? 

* * *

[1] Even though he bloody well knew that Aziraphale had never meant it _literally_. Well. Except when in the Bentley.

[2] He knew what to do, and he did it with style.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Tags to Mind:**
> 
> **Implied/Referenced Torture:** Our Heroes need to make a detour through the Pit (where the souls of the damned are kept) in order to get out of Hell in (hopefully) one piece. They don't see any humans getting tortured (although they do hear some things). They get down to a lower level and find three demons (Ulgon, Altadoth, and Migthaxad) chained to pillars for public punishment (plucking feathers out of their wings). Their crime: sneaking to the surface to see Ariadne. Aziraphale is convinced this is their fault; Crowley points out that the demons down there made choices. Samael, at that point, realizes she can make choices to.
> 
> If this is something you don't want to read, skip starting at "Samael’s steps stopped sounding like tolling bells" and start reading again at "She could make choices too."
> 
>  **Fantasy Violence, Part 1** : Samael flies down through the Pit and, after dispatching the lead demon with her thunder-spear, offers the rest of them the chance to run. Half of them take her up on it; the rest she curb-stomps (mostly using the thunder-spear).
> 
> If this is something you don't want to read, skip starting at "Then she jabbed the spear in her direction" and start reading again at "Finally only one remained, curled up in a ball."
> 
>  **Fantasy Violence, Part 2** : Crowley uses the Wabbajack and gets an ice explosion for the first time. At Dionysus's instigation, Samael uses the thunder-spear the create a mini-lightning storm in the Pit. Dionysus keeps the lightning from hurting Our Heroes as they dash for the door to the Pit.
> 
> If this is something you don't want to read, skip starting at "Crowley decided that demon would make for an excellent first target" and start reading again at "And they ran – a lightning storm at their back, Hell-only-knew-what in front of them."
> 
>  **Fantasy Violence, Part 3** (detect a running theme?): The time Our Heroes bought with the lightning storm runs out as Hastur and the other demons start to catch up. Dionysus tries to use vines to keep them away; Hastur shoots Hellfire at the vines and hurts Dionysus. Crowley gets Dionysus out of the way, and he and Samael use the Wabbajack and thunder-spear to hold the demons at bay while they try to run. Dionysus even comes back with more vine action. This works well enough until Hastur gets too close to Crowley and grabs the Wabbajack.
> 
> If you don't want to read this, skip starting at "Behind them, Crowley heard large metal doors bang open" and start reading at "“Got you.” Hastur grinned." (But read the next bit first, because this bit goes right into the next tag.)
> 
>  **Villainous Character Death** (AKA something different!): Hastur grabs the Wabbajack, but Crowley hasn't let go. Crowley swings the Wabbajack and turns Hastur into a sweet roll. He picks up the sweet roll and offers it to Aziraphale as a snack. At that point the hellhounds get a little too close for comfort, so Aziraphale grabs the sweet roll and throws it for the hellhounds to fetch. (It works.)
> 
> If you don't want to read this, skip starting at "“Got you.” Hastur grinned" and start reading again at "Crowley didn’t have time to watch the ensuing chaos."
> 
>  **Fantasy Violence, Part I Lost Count** : Dionysus attempts to use his vines on Satan. Satan tries to blast them with Hellfire, but Samael gets in the way and uses the aegis to catch the Hellfire. Satan then flicks her away with about the same amount of effort he'd use to swat a fly.
> 
> If you don't want to read this, skip starting at "Dionysus’s eyes went wide, then narrowed," and start reading again at "“Samael!” Mephistopheles shouted."
> 
>  **Deadnaming, Gaslighting, and More Fantasy VIolence** : Satan attempts to, uh, "reason" with Crowley, pointing out that Crowley can't defeat him, then saying that he's still willing to forgive Crowley even after everything (unlike Some People), and then getting annoyed that Crowley hid Ariadne from him. He offers Crowley a shot at forgiveness if he turns Ariadne over to him. Only problem is that he keeps calling Crowley "Crawly," which only makes Crowley shout, "That's not my name!" Crowley gives as good as he gets and tells Satan that he hid Ariadne to keep her away from him. Satan then uses Crowley's former angelic name, which is supposed to make any demon who hears it very upset ... except Crowley doesn't get upset, because that's not his name. Instead he waves the Wabbajack, which causes a massive explosion and sends Satan into the lake of fire.
> 
> If you'd like to skip this, skip starting at "Satan sighed and shook his head" and start reading at "Well. He certainly enjoyed the memory."
> 
> PHEW.
> 
> If you managed to make it through the chapter and/or this spiel, thank you! Leave a comment! And come chat on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/) if you like!


	25. Challenging the Doors of Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another **mind the tags** chapter. See the end notes for details about which tags to mind.
> 
> I promise these notes won't be as long as the last chapter's notes.

When Ariadne had asked Asterion if he’d seen a flaming sword, his ears had perked up and his eyebrows had risen. But he’d nodded, and he’d led Ariadne back into the garden, toward the mountains that rose from forest floor and overtopped the high, high wall.

Somehow, when they came to a stop in front of a rocky cave … Ariadne couldn’t find it in her to be surprised.

“Let me guess,” she said, her wings – she’d not put them away – twitching with nerves. “The flaming sword is in there.”

Asterion snorted and nodded.

Ariadne crossed her arms over her chest and observed. The grass rolled up to the cave’s entrance, which was surrounded by sharp, jagged rocks on all sides. Inside, she could see nothing but shadow giving way to night black.

The first thought that came to mind was of a young starfighter pilot staring into a swamp-cave. The second thought that came to mind was of a desert scavenger going spelunking.

Needless to say, Ariadne had a _bad_ feeling about this.

“I suppose if I were to ask you what was in there, you’d say ‘only what I take with me’?” she murmured.

“Mmmrph?” Asterion asked.

“It’s a long story,” Ariadne replied. “I—” The words _I’ll explain later_ sat on the tip of her tongue and died there.

She looked up at Asterion. He cocked his head to one side and sent a questioning look back down to her.

Who was to say she’d _get_ a later, after all this was over? After she found the sword and the apple?

Guilt churned through her. She glanced at the ground and pushed a hand through her hair.

Then she took a deep breath. Looked around for a sharp stick or a fallen branch heavy enough to work as a club—

No. Yoda had told Luke that he wouldn’t need weapons. And bringing them hadn’t exactly worked out well for him.

“I’ll explain as we go,” Ariadne said, holding out her hand to Asterion. He took it with a satisfied grunt and a flap of his ears. Together they walked toward the cave.

As they crossed the threshold, Ariadne started, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away—”

She didn’t get any farther.

The world flipped sideways—the darkness of the cave exploded in light—a rushing sound filled her ears—

And Asterion’s fingers slipped from hers—

“NO!” Ariadne shouted, chasing his hand even though the floor wasn’t under her feet anymore and her wings weren’t sure which way to flap. “ASTERION!”

And then—

Then Ariadne wasn’t in a cave anymore.

She stumbled, skidding along the hard-packed earthen floor. Her hand shot out, scrambling for support—

It found it. On a wall.

Ariadne blinked. She stared at her feet, at sandals whose like she hadn’t worn in centuries.

Her heart began to pound, and slowly, she looked up.

The walls. She recognized those walls, the rough stonework, the double-headed axes ( _labryses_ ) carved into them. If she looked up—there were the torches, another of Daedalus’s ingenious inventions; she still didn’t know how he had managed to keep them lit. They couldn’t find anyone to do it; Ariadne was the only one brave enough to venture inside the gates—

Ariadne’s stomach plunged, and she looked over her shoulder.

The gates. Heavy bronze, glinting in the torchlight. On this side she could just make out the back of the huge bull’s head that housed the lock.

And tied to one of the bars, a thread. Linen spun so fine that it glinted in the firelight like spider-silk.

“No,” Ariadne whispered.

There was only one person who had used a thread like this to find his way into the labyrinth and back out again—

_“I should go with you,” Ariadne said. She stood outside the gates, her hands wrapped around the bars, staring up into sea-green eyes. “He doesn’t know you; he might not—”_

_“Ariadne. Shhh.” Sword-callused fingers chucked her under the chin and ghosted along her cheek. “We discussed this, remember? You need to be the lookout. Keep your father’s guards from sticking their noses where they don’t belong.”_

_Ariadne looked beyond the eyes and the hands and the young man they were attached to, down the twisting corridors of the labyrinth. “This just doesn’t feel right.”_

_“It’s fine. Everything will be fine. Now, can I get a kiss for luck?”_

_Ariadne looked up. He was smiling. So she smiled, and stood on tiptoe and gave him one._

_“Back before you know I’m gone,” he said, taking a step backward. He tugged the thread between his fingers, making sure it held fast. Then, with one last wave, he turned and walked down the labyrinth, the thread unspooling with every step._

_She let him get five steps before calling after him. “Theseus?”_

_He turned around, one eyebrow raised._

_“Be careful?” she whispered._

_He grinned. “I always am. Now stop worrying and trust me, darling.”_

_And she did. At least until she heard the first—_

“ROAAAAARRRRRR!!!!!!”

“ _No_!” Ariadne shrieked. She hitched her skirt up to her knees, followed the thread and ran.

This couldn’t be happening. Not _again_. Not when she’d just gotten Asterion back!

The glint of the thread in the torchlight was the only guide she had, but she didn’t need more. Not when she’d run down this path so many times in her nightmares. She knew every turn, every twist, every switchback and double-cross—

Every time she made a turn, the roaring got louder, more frantic—

Until she found herself skidding into the heart of the maze.

Ariadne’s heart dropped and she barely held back a scream.

Asterion crouched against the far wall, head bowed and horns out. He held his bicep, marred by a deep gash weeping blood. Blood dotted the walls, the floors, glinting in the torchlight and making the air heavy with its sickly-sweet smell.

And there was Theseus, the sword she somehow hadn’t seen as they hurried to the labyrinth held high above his head, ready to crash down on Asterion’s unprotected neck.

Just like before …

The first time this had happened, she’d been stupid; she’d screamed at Theseus, demanded to know what he thought he was doing, saying ridiculous things like _Stop, you’re hurting him!_

This time Ariadne grabbed a torch off the wall. Conjuring flame was more trouble than it was worth, but making a flame grow was another thing entirely—

She concentrated and the flame leapt out, billowing across the space between her and Theseus—

Theseus’s head whipped around, eyes glowing with a light that wasn’t mortal. His free hand snapped up—

A jet of salt-thick seawater shot from it, crashed into the flame and then into Ariadne’s chest, sending her flying into the wall. Her skull hit with a crack that made the world shake and fireworks explode across her eyes.

And when her vision cleared, she saw the sword swing up, flash in the torchlight, then come back down to where Asterion was crouching—

“ _NOOOOO!_ ”

And Ariadne was back at the gates.

“What?” she whispered. Her heart still pounded, her breath still came in harsh pants. But her head didn’t hurt anymore, and the thread was still tied to the bar, still glinting—

“ROAAAAARRRRRR!!!!!!”

“Asterion!” Ariadne yelled, and took off running again, following the thread.

This time—this time she’d be smarter. Flame had been stupid, so stupid; Theseus was a son of the sea-god, of _course_ flame wouldn’t work on him. This time, she’d—

She rounded the final corner, and this time, she didn’t hesitate. She threw a gale-force wind at Theseus, something that would be sure to knock him flat on his ass—

The wind plastered Theseus’s tunic to his back, but he didn’t break his stride. He stomped once. The earth shook; Ariadne fell. And when she looked up—

The sword swung up, flashed in the torchlight, and came back down to where Asterion was crouching—

“ _NOOOOO!_ ”

And Ariadne was back at the gates.

“ROAAAAARRRRRR!!!!!!”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ariadne snapped, and once again she took off running.

This time she flicked her wrist and a slick of oil appeared in Theseus’s path.

He waved his free hand. A wash of water pushed the oil aside.

Ariadne conjured a rope to trip him. The sword sliced clean through it.

She grabbed a broken clay jar and threw it. It hit—Theseus turned around—

The earth shook; Ariadne fell; and when she looked up—

“ _NOOOOO!_ ”

And Ariadne was back at the gates.

“ROAAAAARRRRRR!!!!!!”

Once again, Ariadne took off running for the heart of the maze.

This time, she tried the oil again. But before Theseus could wash it away, she grabbed a torch off the wall and threw it into the oil slick.

It caught, as she knew it would. And Theseus tried to wash it away, as she hoped he would.

But the wall of flame barreled toward _her_ , surrounded her, and Ariadne had to focus every shred of power she had to keep herself from going up like one of the torches. And when she looked up, Theseus’s sword—

“ _NOOOOO!_ ”

She was back at the gates.

“ROAAAAARRRRRR!!!!!!”

This time, when she got to the heart of the maze, she reached for the white-hot anger and threw it at Theseus. It bounced off him and hit a pillar. The pillar collapsed and took part of the roof with it; Ariadne shouted and covered her head. And when she looked up—

“ _NOOOOO!_ ”

She was back at the gates.

“ROAAAAARRRRRR!!!!!!”

She ran back to the heart of the maze.

She tried everything she could think of. When she doused all the lights, Theseus’s sword glowed. When she reached out with cracking whip-like vines like she’d seen Dionysus use, Theseus cut them to ribbons. When she conjured arrows and shot them at Theseus, he turned around long enough to bat them out of the air before causing another earthquake and sending her sprawling.

No matter what she tried, the results were the same. Theseus raised his sword; Asterion was trapped; Ariadne screamed—and she was back at the beginning again.

After the fifth or the tenth or the twentieth time she found herself back at the gates, Ariadne collapsed to her knees, holding her stomach and sobbing.

She couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t watch Asterion die again and again. She was useless; she had all these powers but couldn’t save him; fine, she _knew that_ , but the cave or labyrinth or sadistic Abrahamic god who set up this trap of a garden didn’t have to _rub it in_ —

“ROAAAAARRRRRR!!!!!!”

“No, _please_ ,” Ariadne sobbed. She looked up—

And noticed something she hadn’t before.

The gate was open.

Ariadne’s breath left her in something that could have been a pant or a sob.

The gate was open. And all she had to do was get up and walk through it. Leave, and she’d never have to see this labyrinth or that sword or the blood or Theseus ever again—

Except that was a lie. Because she would see them. All of them. Every time she closed her eyes. And now she’d no longer be able to tell herself that she’d been too late, that she’d _tried_ and had just failed. Instead she’d know that she had walked away. That she’d brought death to her brother’s door and had stood aside to let it claim him.

There would be no hiding from who she was. Not anymore.

_No._

Ariadne took a deep breath. Then she forced herself to her feet.

Tears were still leaking from her eyes; Ariadne swept them aside. She marched down the corridor, not bothering to run. She didn’t need to. No matter how fast or how slow she went, when she got to the heart of the maze, Theseus would be standing over Asterion with his sword raised. And this time—

This time she needed to conserve her strength.

Because she was either going to save Asterion or she was going to die trying.

So she walked. And she planned. And it wasn’t until she rounded the second-to-last corner that she started to run.

She’d need speed for what she had to do—

Ariadne swung herself around the last corner without slowing. Her wings had already popped out, hooked and ready for a fight. Theseus was right where she expected him to be, back to her, sword-arm raised high—

With a yell—just enough to make Theseus jump, just enough to make Asterion look up—Ariadne launched herself at Theseus.

Even with her wings propelling her, she couldn’t tackle him to the ground. But she could and did grab onto his back, koala-like, legs wrapped around his waist and one arm snaking around his neck.

Theseus yelled and tried to shake her off. Ariadne clung more tightly, trying to turn the loose grip she had on his neck into a chokehold—

Theseus slammed her into a wall. Ariadne shouted, willed the nails on her free hand into claws and raked them down the side of his face. Theseus slammed her into the wall again—

Ariadne’s wings started to beat, and it was just enough to knock Theseus off-balance. Ariadne pulled her weight to one side, into the direction of Theseus’s stumbling—

He listed and fell. Ariadne twisted in midair to make sure he landed underneath her.

Her legs still shouted in pain, pinned beneath Theseus’s weight and hers. But she could only spare a second of disorientation. Before Theseus could do more than stir, Ariadne grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head into the hard-packed earth, once, twice, again—

The copper smell of blood filled the air; Ariadne heard something crunch; and Theseus’s grip on the sword loosened and fell slack—

Ariadne darted forward and grabbed the hilt.

Her first thought, as her hand locked around it, was that the sword was all wrong. This wasn’t an Athenian xiphos with its short blade and long, flat guard; this was more like a gladius, with a longer blade, circular pommel and rounded guard—

Her second thought was that the sword was _on fire_.

And her third thought wasn’t a thought at all, but more like panic, because the labyrinth was turning sideways; the world had exploded in light; a rushing sound had filled her ears—

And when the light faded, Ariadne wasn’t in the labyrinth anymore.

* * *

The sword should have dropped with a clang. Instead, it fell with a soft thud, landing on dirt, muffled by grass.

She was outside the cave again, where there was sunshine. Birds. A gentle breeze. Trees and bushes in that highly improbably flowering-while-fruiting state.

And Asterion—

_Asterion wasn’t there._

“ASTERION!” Ariadne shouted—no, it wasn’t a shout; it was a screech, a howl. The sort of sound that came straight from the soul, defying what the vocal cords thought they could do. “ASTERION, WHERE ARE YOU!?”

She looked left, right, up, down, backwards, forwards—she couldn’t have lost him. She hadn’t watched him die so many times and finally figured a way out only to lose him now—

“ _ASTERION_!”

“Mmmrph?”

And there he was. Whole and unharmed, standing just beyond the tree line, hands spread in what could only be confusion. Next to him was—

It didn’t matter. Ariadne ran to him, heart in her throat and sword forgotten on the grass. And when she got to him, she barreled into him, for the moment not caring that he didn’t like this type of contact and entirely without the breath to ask if he was all right.

She just pulled him close and held on tight.

“Oh, dear,” said a soft voice to Ariadne’s left. “No, this isn’t good at all.”

Ariadne ignored it, eyes screwed shut. Right now, Asterion was whole, real, solid, and that was all that mattered. Anything or anyone else who wanted a piece of her would just have to wait.

“Ariadne?”

Ariadne turned her head away from the voice, and—paused. Asterion’s tunic was—wet? But—

The blood in the labyrinth came back to her in a sickening lurch, and Ariadne pulled away.

Not far. Just far enough to see. She hadn’t—she hadn’t had time to catalog all of Asterion’s injuries, far more worried about what was going to happen next than what had already happened.

Now though—she gave him a thorough once-over, up and down, then down and up again, just to be sure.

But there was nothing. No gash on his arm. No slashes in his tunic. No scratches or bruises. Just—just a wet spot.

Right where her cheek had been …

Asterion’s thumb – exaggeratedly gentle, fine motor skills had never been his strong suit so he tended to overcompensate – brushed over her cheek. “Mmmrph?” he asked, faint, distressed.

Asterion’s thumb was wet.

Her cheeks were wet.

“Ariadne.” The voice was soft, meant for comfort. “Ariadne. It’s all right. Just look at me. Everything is—”

A hand landed on her shoulder, and Ariadne shrieked.

Her wings—had she ever put them away?—well, away or not before, they were out now, hooked, flapping and ready to fight. And the sword—where had she left the sword?

It was in her hand now. Ariadne whipped around, wings between Asterion and whoever had touched her, sword out and on fire, held firm in both hands—

“Whoa!” The person—Eloise, it was Eloise—leapt backward, hands up and palms empty in a universal gesture of surrender. “Easy, easy. No one’s going to hurt you here.”

Something laughed. At least, the noise sounded like laughter – like a jackal might laugh.

It took Ariadne an embarrassing amount of time to realize she was the one making that sound.

“No one’s—going to— _hurt_ me?” The laughter-like sound kept coming, and the muscles in Ariadne’s stomach began to hurt from pushing it out. The sword was shaking, but it hadn’t left Ariadne’s grip yet, so she whirled with it toward the cave. “Theseus is in—”

Ariadne’s gaze had followed the sword. And when it did, the words on the tip of her tongue died.

There was no cave.

The sword started to shake even more.

“Ariadne,” and now there was a faint hint of command in those words, a tone that reminded Ariadne of Pasiphaë when playtime was over and her brood had best listen closely, because she wasn’t going say this twice, “I think you had best put that sword down. I don’t want you to hurt yourself with it.”

Ariadne almost started to laugh again, or maybe it was cry, or maybe it was both. Because that was something Theseus would have said, had Ariadne ever picked up a sword in his presence, and if this Eloise thought Ariadne was going to listen to that—

A large hand closed over both of Ariadne’s wrists.

She looked up.

Asterion had—somehow—reached around her wings and grabbed her wrists. And now he was looking down at her.

He narrowed his eyes and let out one small huff.

_You are going to drop this sword,_ that huff said, _and you are going to do it now, or I am going to make you._

Ariadne squeaked. Asterion had—well, he’d never done this to _her_. But he’d done it to Catreus and Deucalion often, when their sparring had grown a little too heated and Asterion had had enough. He’d pick up whichever one was closest under the armpits and hold on tight until he stopped struggling and dropped the practice weapons.

Ariadne dropped the sword. Again.

“There you go.” Eloise was smiling, the fake-reassuring smile that someone might wear if they were dealing with a small child on the verge of a complete meltdown. If Ariadne hadn’t been quite aware that she was several degrees beyond her melting point, she might have been insulted. “Would you like something to eat?”

Eloise lifted the basket on her arm. The _picnic_ basket. Ariadne blinked.

“Here,” Eloise said, opening up the basket, “I’ve got baklava, ice wine—”

“Ice wine?” Ariadne repeated stupidly. Ice wine was her guilty pleasure, the wine Dionysus rolled his eyes over and claimed was one of the most ridiculous things mortals had ever done to grapes, but which he still bought her a case of every year on her birthday. What in Tartarus’s name was Eloise doing with ice wine?

“Here!” Eloise pulled the bottle out of the basket—it was from that little winery up in the Finger Lakes that Ariadne had a soft spot for—and Ariadne’s hands started to shake again.

“And don’t worry,” Eloise said to Asterion, “I’ve got pomegranates for you, too.”

Asterion huffed happily, and even as Ariadne warmed – Asterion had always loved pomegranates, when he could get them – something in her pinged.

“Wait,” Ariadne said, now putting a (shaking) hand on Asterion’s wrist. “What’s the catch?”

Eloise blinked, head tilted to one side. “Catch?”

“You mentioned pomegranates,” Ariadne said. “The last time someone I knew ate pomegranates in—in an afterlife, of sorts—”

Eloise raised an eyebrow, slowly, and Ariadne swallowed. “I think we both know there’s more to _that_ particular story than an inopportune snack,” Eloise pointed out.

Now Ariadne’s face burned, because she did know there was more to that story – a lot more – but now wasn’t the time to get into the details of Persephone and Hades’s courtship. “The point stands.”

“Does it?” Eloise asked. She set the picnic basket down, took a blanket from it and began to shake it out.

It was tartan. And not just any tartan, but a tartan in the same colors Aziraphale favored. Ariadne stared at the blanket and felt the pulse that she didn’t technically need[1] roar in her ears.

Eloise sensed the regard, paused, and raised an eyebrow at Ariadne. “I told you that no one was going to hurt you here. That includes me.”

“You have ice wine. Baklava. Pomegranates—ok, fine, Asterion’s been here a while, maybe that’s not so scary. But. That _tartan_. You …” Ariadne blinked and narrowed her eyes. “Who _are_ you, and what do you want?”

Now Eloise’s lips quirked up in a smile. “Ah, I told you that already, Ariadne: _ehyeh asher ehyeh_. As for what I want …”

She dropped the tartan blanket, smoothed it out, and sat herself down, gesturing to the blanket and the basket with one hand. “Right now, what I want is for you to sit down, eat, and catch your breath.”

Ariadne slowly sat, choosing the corner of the picnic blanket as far away as possible from Eloise – which was nearly as far away as it was possible to get from the basket, but since she wasn’t entirely sure she trusted Eloise enough to eat her food, that was no hardship.

Asterion dropped to the blanket beside her, between Ariadne and the picnic basket. He reached inside and took out a pomegranate.

“Here, let me,” Ariadne said automatically, because Asterion had rarely been allowed to handle knives (the fine motor skills thing again, and the fact that Asterion with knives had made Minos very nervous), but there was no need. Asterion twisted the stem—

And the pomegranate came apart evenly, easily, perfectly, not one aril cut or crushed in the attempt.

Ariadne’s jaw dropped. “How—”

“There are no knives in Eden – well, other than the sword, and that hasn’t been here very long.” Eloise dug into the picnic basket and pulled out a baking pan of baklava that, strictly speaking, should not have fit into the basket. “It was easy enough to make a few adjustments to the pomegranate tree so that the fruit was easier for Asterion to eat.”

Ariadne blinked. “You. Or—or someone—just—redesigned pomegranates so Asterion could eat them?”

Asterion grunted in assent, though the sound was a bit muffled, given that his mouth was full of pomegranate.

“Of course,” Eloise replied. She raised an eyebrow at Ariadne. “He’s here for the same reason you are. Because it was the safest place for him to go after …”

Asterion had paused in his eating.

Eloise glanced at him sidelong. “After,” she said, and that was that. “Now eat your baklava.”

A sudden weight materialized on her lap—and when Ariadne looked down, there was a plate of baklava on it, complete with a fork, and a glass of ice wine slightly to her right.

The baklava looked amazing. And smelled divine.

Ariadne took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

_You’re already at the mercy of whoever is running this show. You might as well eat the baklava._

She speared a bit with her fork and popped it into her mouth before she could talk herself out of it.

And her eyes went wide. There was no one – _no one_ – who could make baklava as good as Hestia’s. Even Demeter couldn’t, and Demeter had a certain flair for anything that had flour as a major ingredient.

This baklava was not as good as Hestia’s. But it was damn close.

Eloise leaned forward, drinking in Ariadne’s every expression. “Well?” she asked.

“It’s—it’s very good,” Ariadne said. “Very, very good.”

Eloise beamed. “Good! I got the recipe from an old friend, and I like it – but I haven’t had the chance for anyone else to try it.”

“Huh,” Ariadne replied, because it seemed like a reply was called for. She nudged Asterion, gesturing to her baklava in a wordless offer to split it.

Asterion glanced at it with interest, then shook his head and went back to his pomegranate.

“You know,” Eloise pointed out, “there’s plenty here for Asterion to have his own if he wants some.”

Ariadne glanced at the baking pan, which was still mostly full. “True,” she murmured.

“Plenty of pomegranates for you too. Or any other fruit. Or vegetable. Or—”

“Don’t suppose I could trouble you for an apple?” Ariadne muttered to her plate.

“Of course, if that’s what you’re—” Eloise’s hand hovered over the basket. Then she blinked. And frowned.

“Very funny,” she said, turning back to her own baklava. “You know there are many more apple trees in the Garden than the Tree of Knowledge, don’t you?”

“I do now,” Ariadne replied. “So is ‘needle in a haystack’ the name of the game?”

“Not quite.”

_Wonderful,_ Ariadne thought. She speared the next bit of baklava with what could only be called “extreme prejudice.” _Wonder what trauma I’m going to have to relive in order to get the damn apple._

She looked over her shoulder at where the cave—had been. The stubborn rock face told her nothing.

“Ariadne,” Eloise said, and a hand – large, warm, and comforting, so Asterion’s – landed on Ariadne’s knee. “Theseus wasn’t real – you know that, right?”

Ariadne let her gaze flicker up. “Wasn’t he?”

Eloise blinked.

“Because from where I’m sitting, this whole place is starting to look a bit like King’s Cross.” She drove her fork into the baklava with enough force to poke four tiny holes in the paper plate. “Seems like I’m just short just one fragment of Voldemort’s soul and Dumbledore telling me, ‘Of course it is happening inside your head, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?’ to complete the picture. You know?”

“You see yourself as Harry then,” Eloise replied, tone carefully neutral.

Ariadne shrugged. “Isn’t identifying with the protagonist the point?”

“That’s not quite an answer.”

“No, it’s not.” Ariadne looked up, forced a smile she knew wouldn’t look at all real, and shrugged.

“You don’t trust me,” Eloise replied.

“And that’s not a question.”

Ariadne was being quite rude, and she knew it. But Eloise did not respond in kind. Instead, she tilted her head to one side. “May I ask why not?”

“You just did.”

“And will you answer?”

Ariadne didn’t. At least not right away. When Asterion nudged her – timing it so that his elbow knocked into hers just as Ariadne was about to bring up another forkful to her mouth and shooting her a _look_ when she glared at him – she rethought that.

She sighed and looked again at Eloise. Her expression was open, sincere, curious – or at any rate sincerely curious. “Why should I?” Ariadne asked. And before Asterion could knock her elbow again, she added, “You might not look like David Bowie in tight pants, but you’re either the Goblin King running this labyrinth, or you’re one of his cronies. And you won’t tell me who you are or what you really want.”

“I told you—”

“You know I don’t understand what you mean.”

Now Eloise’s eyes dropped. “True. I do. But …” Eloise hummed low in her throat and took a sip from her own glass of ice wine. “If I were to tell you the truth in a way you understood, you’d trust me even less.”

Ariadne sighed. “So why should I trust you at all?”

“Asterion does,” Eloise said.

Ariadne raised an eyebrow at Asterion, who nodded.

“Why do you trust her?” Ariadne asked.

Asterion hummed, tossing a pomegranate – a whole one – from hand to hand as he pondered the question. Then he pointed at Ariadne and slowly brought his finger to point at Eloise. Then back to Ariadne, and back again to Eloise. And he put his hands together, palm-on-palm, the gesture he’d always used for _same_.

Ariadne’s jaw dropped. There was absolutely no way he could mean—“We are not alike!”

“Not in many ways, no,” Eloise said. “But we both treat him like a person.”

Ariadne sucked in air.

“And there aren’t very many—”

“Yeah, no, I get it,” Ariadne spat out. Because she did. The number of people who had consistently seen Asterion as a person and not a monster could be counted on one hand. Of course Asterion would trust anyone who fell into that category. Hell, Ariadne had fallen for the same trick – Theseus had been so careful to call Asterion by his name and refer to him as _your brother_ , so Ariadne hadn’t seen the trap until it was sprung.

Of course, unlike Theseus, Eloise was treating Asterion like a person to his face. And had been for some …

“Has she been here with you from the beginning?” Ariadne asked.

Asterion wiggled his hand, his gesture for _sometimes_.

“I’ve had other duties, other places to be,” Eloise clarified. “But I was here to welcome Asterion when he first came to Eden. Like I was for you.”

“Were you a bit more forthcoming with him?” Ariadne muttered.

Asterion nodded rapidly.

“Unlike with you, telling him the truth led to more trust, not less,” Eloise replied.

“Is that a character flaw on my part or Asterion’s?” Ariadne asked.

“Neither. You were both in very different places when you first came here.” And Eloise smiled.

Ariadne sighed, put her plate to the side and leaned back, palms flat on the ground and gaze fixed on the cloudless sky.

She thought.

She brought her gaze back down. “How about,” she suggested, “we meet each other halfway?”

Eloise raised an eyebrow.

“You tell me what you want – what you _actually_ want – and I’ll trust you as far as Asterion can throw you.”

“As opposed to as far as you yourself can throw me?” Eloise chuckled.

Ariadne clicked her tongue and winked. “Bingo.”

“Fair enough.” Eloise took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What I want … well, in the short term, what I want is for you to be able to leave the Garden with a new body and more importantly, the tools that will keep you from needing to come back here anytime soon.”

“And in the long term?” Ariadne asked.

Eloise didn’t answer right away, and Ariadne wondered if she already considered her part of the bargain fulfilled. But then she spoke. “The rift between Heaven and Hell has gone on too long and grown too deep. Their hatred of each other nearly caused them to destroy humanity and the world that was created for them. And you know, of course, that they need to be brought to heel.” Eloise shot Ariadne a look that was just shy of a glare, almost daring her to disagree.

Ariadne didn’t.

“And as clever as the other pantheons are … they will not succeed in doing what needs to be done. Not on their own. You’ll need to do that.”

Ariadne goggled. “ _Me_?”

“Not all by yourself, of course, I’m sure your fathers and your friends would be happy to help—”

“You do realize that it only took six of them to ‘discorporate’ me, and honestly? I _still_ haven’t figured out how I’m not actually dead.”

Eloise smiled enigmatically. “I did say that you were to leave here with the tools that would keep you from having to return anytime soon.”

Ariadne felt her eyebrows creeping into her hairline. “An apple and a sword? Really? That’s what’s going to keep me alive?”

“Something like that. And speaking of which …” Eloise popped to her feet, brushing the crumbs off. “I do believe that we have an apple you need to fetch. Are you ready?”

Ariadne turned to Asterion. “What do you say, Asterion? You up for another walk?”

Asterion’s reply was to grin toothily, take another three pomegranates from the picnic basket, and slowly rise to his feet. He held out a hand to Ariadne.

Ariadne took it, but before she levered herself up, she looked back at Eloise. “I suppose I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

* * *

[1] And right now, given the discorporation, didn’t technically have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Tags to Mind**
> 
> **Fantasy Violence** : Hearing Asterion's roar, Ariadne rushes through the labyrinth and finds Theseus standing over Asterion, ready to strike the killing blow. Ariadne uses magic (fire) to try to stop him; he stops her with a jet of seawater, slamming her into the wall. When Ariadne looks up, she sees Theseus's sword come up. Just before it hits Asterion, the scene resets with Ariadne back at the start of the labyrinth. She rushes back and tries a different form of magic - gale-force wind - to stop Theseus, but he counters that with an earthquake. Once again, Ariadne is knocked down and the scene resets. This happens several more times. Then, when Ariadne is sent back to the beginning, she notices for the first time that the gate is open and she could choose to walk away. She decides not to and marches back through the labyrinth, determined to save Asterion or die trying. When she gets there, she attacks Theseus physically instead of with magic. The fight goes on until Ariadne is able to grab Theseus's sword from him - at which point his sword turns into the flaming sword, and Ariadne is booted out of the labyrinth entirely (same manner in which she came in).
> 
> If you want to skip this, you'll want to stop reading at the first "ROAAAAARRRRRR!!!!!!” and pick back up at the scene break (starts with "The sword should have dropped").
> 
> And that's it!
> 
> You know the drill - leave a comment if you liked what you read, and hit me up on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/) if you want to chat more!


	26. Pray Tomorrow Gets Me Higher

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, folks! We've got ourselves another **mind the tags** chapter. See the notes at the end for what tag to mind and how to avoid any content that might upset you!

The lift to Heaven had never taken quite so long.

Samael told herself to remain calm. Don’t fidget. Don’t pace. Don’t look furtively from side to side (there was no one else standing in the lift; she had already checked three times). _And whatever, whatever you do …_

_Don’t put your hand in your pocket._

The last time she’d done that, she’d nearly poked Dionysus in the eye. And Dionysus had said that she was going to get bitten if it happened again.

_“_ I’m not Odin,” he’d said – growled, really. “I’m not going to be able to pull off the eyepatch look.”

Samael took a deep breath and watched the lit-up numbers climb ever higher.

Until she felt a squirming in the right pocket of her overcoat – the one she wasn’t supposed to put her hand in, the one Dionysus was hitching a ride in.

She looked down.

A small feline head poked out of her pocket. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought that Dionysus had transformed himself into a kitten. But Dionysus had already disabused her – all of them – of that notion.

_“_ It’s the rusty spotted cat,” he’d said as he had hopped along the table that they’d commandeered as they had planned their assault on Heaven. “World’s smallest cat species. If I have to be small enough to fit in one of Samael’s pockets, I’m picking a species with teeth.”

“Are we almost there?” Dionysus asked, bringing Samael back to the present.

“It’s Heaven,” Samael said, breathing deeply to draw the tension out. It didn’t work. “It’s meant to be far from the world.”

“Hmmm.” Samael’s pocket wiggled in a manner that suggested Dionysus was twitching his tail. It was odd on more levels than she cared to contemplate. “It didn’t take this long to get into Hell.”

“Well, there’s a difference between a controlled ascent and a—” Samael bit her lip, the hand on the opposite side of Dionysus bunching into a fist.

A cat, particularly the species Dionysus had chosen, did not have eyebrows, and even if they did … they certainly didn’t have the facial muscles to raise one. Yet Dionysus did. “And a?”

“Free fall,” Samael forced out through gritted teeth.

Dionysus’s nose scrunched in a way that, by rights, should have been adorable, except Samael was too keyed up to appreciate it (and Dionysus probably would have bitten her if she had). “That wasn’t a …” He stopped, eyes narrowed as he surveyed her. “Do you need another patch?”

“I’m fine,” Samael said, even if she smiled slightly at the thought of the patches in her other pocket. Dionysus had procured them shortly after they’d all washed up topside (Hades had sent an escort to get them as soon as the boat came onto the Phlegethon and had very quickly sent them out of his realm; Dionysus had not seemed at all surprised by this). He’d said they were called “nicotine patches” and that humans used them to get the chemical that made smoking feel good into them when they couldn’t smoke. He’d said they might “take the edge off” for Samael, and so far, they had. Or at least, she couldn’t imagine how much more tense she’d be if not for the little bit of sticky plastic on her corporation’s arm.

“Well, let me know if that changes.” Dionysus shifted away, resting two paws on the edge of Samael’s pocket and watching the number at the top of the lift climb with an unblinking gaze.

“Do you think,” Samael started when the silence stretched too long—and stopped.

Dionysus canted his head at her. “Do I think what?”

“This plan is mad,” Samael said.

“Well, yeah, obviously. Pretty much everything we’ve done since leaving the Underworld the first time has been completely insane.” Dionysus’s head tilted at a deeper angle. “Besides, this is Mephistopheles’s plan, isn’t it? And he’s the smart one.”

Yes, this was Mephistopheles’s plan. And he was clever. And he wasn’t asking Samael to do anything that he hadn’t done himself when they needed to get into Hell.

But … it was different, Samael thought, for her. Hell had had no idea that Mephistopheles had been planning betrayal.[1] Whereas Heaven … she’d been _seen_ in Hell; she’d been _conspicuous_ ; if Beelzebub or Dagon had figured out what had gone down and who’d been present and had contacted Michael or Uriel or Gabriel …

Well. Then she was well and truly fucked.

“Relax,” Dionysus said, as if he could read her mind. “If anything goes wrong, that’s what I’m here for.”

“ _You’re_ here because you can’t travel through …” Samael tapped the pocket that held her cel-phone. “You know.”

“Well, that too. But also,” Dionysus grinned, showing two rows of teeth that were really far too sharp and pointy to belong in a face that cute, “to show them just why tangling with Ari was a mistake.”

He might have said more, but the lift chimed, and Dionysus dove back into her pocket before he could be seen.

As for Samael, she judged she had just enough time for one deep breath before doors opened – and she took it.

Then she squared her shoulders and strode out like she had places to go, people to see, things to do, and the weight of the world on her shoulders.

There were two angels standing guard at the door; both snapped off a salute as soon as they saw Samael. “At ease,” Samael said automatically and tried to walk past them.

“Er,” said the first one, stepping nervously in front of her. “Er, Archangel Samael, my apologies, but—but um—our orders …” His voice trailed to a stammering halt.

“Your orders?” Samael prodded, putting both hands on her hips so she’d look annoyed.

“Badges, ma’am!” the second one forced out. “Everyone’s gotta be checked. Even—even archangels! Ma’am.”

For a minute, Samael debated arguing, pointing out that surely those rules surely didn’t apply to _her_ … except she’d spent over six thousand years _not_ being stupid, and one of the prime ways to be stupid when you were in command of an army was to pretend that none of the rules applied to you. Even if you thought the rules were bloody stupid, you went along with them in front of the troops and shouted at the officers who’d thought them up later. “Right. Of course.” Samael took out her badge and handed it to the second angel.

She wondered if she ought to get impatient. Her temper was, after all, famously short and her stores of patience practically nonexistent. And while yes, going along with orders (even bloody stupid ones) was her M.O., nobody ever said she went along with them _cheerfully_ —

But she didn’t even have time to get impatient; the second guard barely glanced at her badge before handing it back to her. “Right. Everything seems to be in order. Thank you, ma’am!”

Samael’s response was a silent salute before striding away, hands clasped behind her back to keep them out of her pockets.

She made sure to walk at her usual pace – not slow, but measured. Not rushing, but quick. It was the walk of someone who had no time for chit-chat, and she’d spent millennia perfecting it.

“About how close did we come to being in trouble back there?” asked a small, muffled voice from her pocket.

Samael nearly hissed at Dionysus to shut up, someone might _hear_ him – except no one was close enough to do that, and her hissing at nothing would probably draw more attention than Dionysus had. A lot more. “Not too close,” Samael said as quietly as possible while moving her lips as little as necessary.

“Good.” Her pocket squirmed, presumably Dionysus making himself comfortable. “Next stop, the Reliquary?”

“Indeed,” Samael said.

Except the Reliquary wasn’t even in sight when Samael heard a voice that made her stop dead.

“Samael!”

And it wasn’t an intern. Or an officer or platoon leader. Or Uriel or Michael or even the Metatron, all of whom Samael would have gladly taken instead of the voice which was calling for her.

She took a deep breath, turned around, and nodded to the caller.

“Sandalphon.”

Her pocket twitched and then went deadly, deadly still.

Sandalphon was hurrying toward her, which was unsettling. Sandalphon generally preferred a slower approach that milked every last second of dread for all it was worth. And while he was smiling, it was the sort of smile that shook with every step.

Samael took a deep breath and willed the patch on her arm to give her another jolt of that sweet, sweet nicotine.

“Might I have a word?” Sandalphon asked, then, not waiting for Samael to reply, took her arm and led her toward a door that led to one of the stairwells.

Samael almost dug her heels in, almost stood fast and dared Sandalphon to _make_ her move. But she was glad she didn’t. Because the hand Sandalphon had placed on hers was trembling, and his eyes were darting nervously from side to side.

“Something wrong?” Samael asked.

“What?” The word could have been dragged out of him with a shepherd’s crook. “No! I mean—I mean, of course not, Samael, whyever would you ask such a thing?” He smiled, and chuckled, and fished a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his brow with it. He said nothing more until they passed through the door to the stairway and shut it behind them.

And before Samael could round on him and demand to know what exactly was going on here, Sandalphon turned to her and said, “We’ve had terrible news from Hell!”

_Oh. Shit._

“What’s happened?” Samael asked, praying that her voice was the right mix of concerned and wary – not afraid, certainly not, and _definitely_ not just this side of panicked.

Sandalphon gulped and began to mop his brow even more forcefully. “The traitors – they were spotted in Hell.”

_Oh, no!_

“But it gets worse!” Sandalphon sputtered on, not even giving Samael a second to reply. “There was another angel and demon with them!”

_FUCK!_

Samael felt something in her pocket coil and tense, and she clamped down on the top of said pocket as hard as she could while trying to be as inconspicuous as she could.

“ _And_ ,” Sandalphon went on, as if what he’d just said wasn’t bad enough, “there was—there was _someone else_.” He swallowed hard and shot Samael a beseeching look.

“You’re going to have to be a bit more specific than that,” Samael said, and by some miracle, her nerves came out as only slightly more than the usual amount of peevishness.

“We think it’s—” Sandalphon looked from left to right, then up and down, then beckoned Samael closer. She bent her ear, and he whispered, “ _The wine god_!”

_Oh … oh …_ This … might not be so bad. Or it could be a complete disaster. Only one way to find out, really. “Why do you think that?”

“Because—because whoever, whatever he was, he was using _vines_ and _lightning_!” Sandalphon once again looked from side to side. “And he was powerful! Who else could it be?”

“Hmm. Well, we did kill his girlfriend,” Samael said, hoping that the deliberately casual tone wouldn’t be the spark that made the bomb in her pocket explode. “Probably should have seen this coming.”

“Samael! Now is not the time to joke!”

“Who says I’m joking?” Samael said. “We really should have seen this coming. Didn’t the Greeks make a whole business of bloody revenge?”

“I don’t know!” Sandalphon hissed. He wrung his hands together. “And it gets worse!”

“How could it possibly get any worse?”

“Because …” Sandalphon’s hands trembled as he began to count reasons off on his fingers. “First of all, they – the five of them – took something from Hell.”

“What?” Samael asked.

“We don’t know! Beelzebub was able to alert Michael, but things were so chaotic ze couldn’t talk long, and now nobody is picking up no matter how many times we call or how we try to get ahold of them—even _Hastur_ isn’t picking up! Even when Gabriel calls the cel-phone you gave him!”

_Well, he wouldn’t_ , Samael thought, _because I don’t think you get good reception in the GI tract of a hellhound, now, do you?_ and nearly burst out laughing.

“What about the other two?” she asked, if only as a distraction.

Sandalphon blinked.

“The other two demons!” Samael hissed. “The ones who were with us! Legion and—and—what was his name—Megapixel!”

“Those two?” Sandalphon scoffed. “They’re not even in management! What would they know?”

“Would you rather get garbled and incomplete information from an underling, or no information at all?” Samael shot back.

If Sandalphon was smart, he would have said _no information at all_. Because no information at all often was better than garbled and incomplete information, and it was definitely better than deliberate lies. And if Sandalphon didn’t realize that all of those options were most emphatically on the table when pumping a minor demon for information – especially when one had no leverage over that minor demon – then he was an idiot.

Thankfully, Sandalphon was indeed an idiot – or just too scared to think clearly. “That’s—that’s a good point,” Sandalphon said, licking his lips. “We never tried the other two!”

“Well then! There’s our answer. You call Menagerie,” Mephistopheles would surely be too smart to pick up when he saw Sandalphon’s number flash on the screen, “and I’ll try to get hold of Legion. Well, once I talk to Michael.”

“Talk to _Michael_?” Sandalphon squealed.

Samael rolled her eyes. “Not about what we _did_! Just—look, I’ve just got back from the surface, all right? If I don’t check in with Michael, it’s going to look suspicious.”

“Look suspicious …” Sandalphon murmured. Then he turned wide, beseeching eyes to Samael. “But we didn’t even do anything wrong!”

Samael had to clamp down on the top of her pocket hard, before Sandalphon had his hands full of furious rusty spotted cat/wine god/whatever Dionysus changed himself into to tear the archangel apart. “Yes, well, she’s not going to see it that way when an angry wine god shows up on Heaven’s doorstep, shooting lightning out his arse, now, is she?”

“I suppose not,” Sandalphon sighed. “Very well. I’ll try Mephistopheles – you try Legion when you’re done with Michael. And I’ll tell Gabriel that’s what we’re doing.”

“There we go.” Then, because she thought it was necessary, Samael clapped Sandalphon on the shoulder. “Cheer up, Sandalphon. The Lord never sends us anything we can’t handle, right?”

“I … I _hope_ you’re right.” Sandalphon chewed his lower lip, and honestly, if Sandalphon hadn’t gotten himself into this mess by being all for cold-blooded murder of a being whose only crime was existing, Samael might have felt sorry for him. Might. “Good luck,” he said, taking his cel-phone from his pocket and beginning to dial.

“Same to you,” Samael said, and slipped out of the stairwell. As soon as he was safely behind her, she breathed a sigh of relief.

But not before she took out her own cel-phone and texted Mephistopheles. **Sandalphon is going to try to call you. Probably repeatedly. Whatever you do, don’t pick up.**

Mephistopheles responded almost immediately. **Wasn’t planning on it. Are you all right? Is everything going according to plan?**

**Peachy keen,** Samael typed back. **I’ll text you as soon as we’re in position.**

**Be careful.**

The text was enough to make Samael stop dead. Be careful? Her? When was the last time anyone had told _her_ to be careful? Samael was the reason other people had to be careful!

She might have stood there a stupidly long time, trying to swallow around the lump in her throat, except her pocket had something to say. “So that was Sandalphon.”

Samael nearly jumped. Then she shook her head and forced herself to keep walking toward the Reliquary. “Yes.”

“And he thinks he didn’t do anything wrong.”

Samael winced. “We’re angels of the Lord,” she muttered. “We’re not … used to the idea that we can be wrong.”

“Interesting,” Dionysus mused. “Well. If we ever meet him again, I suppose I’ll have to make sure Mr. Sandalphon gets used to that idea.”

She snorted. “If it makes you feel better, your girl did manage to break his corporation’s nose.”

Dionysus was quiet for a long moment. “It doesn’t, really,” he finally said. “But I appreciate the attempt.”

Samael patted the top of her pocket and kept walking. They were almost to the Reliquary. Once she got there, all she’d have to do would be to text Mephistopheles, then as soon as the rest of them were there, she could get the door open and they’d—

She stopped dead.

The Reliquary was in sight.

But between her and it was a full platoon of angels. All standing on guard.

“Why are we stopping?” Dionysus asked.

“Shh!” Samael hissed. Then, purposefully, as if she had every right to be there, she rolled her shoulders back and marched up to the platoon’s commander – thankfully, an angel she recognized. “Morisehale! What’s all this?”

Morisehale saw her coming and snapped off a salute. “Archangel Samael, ma’am! Just following orders!”

“At ease. And orders? What orders?” Samael asked.

Morisehale’s jaw dropped; Samael spat out a quick explanation. “I’ve just gotten back from the surface – I haven’t been able to find anyone yet. What’s going on?”

Morisehale relaxed a fraction. “Orders from Archangel Michael, ma’am! We’re to guard the Reliquary from all comers.”

_Michael? Oh, shit!_ There would be no gainsaying an order from Michael, and thanks to her earlier protestation of ignorance, she couldn’t very well pretend that she came bearing changed orders. “I see. Well, carry on then. If you spot Archangel Michael, tell her I was looking for her.”

“Ma’am! Yes, ma’am!” Morisehale said and snapped off another salute. So did the rest of the platoon. Samael saluted in return and hurried away.

She’d barely gone ten steps before she heard Dionysus begin, “On a scale of—”

“ _Shhhh!_ ” As quickly as she dared, Samael headed for door to the nearest stairwell and ducked into it. “There’s a platoon between us and the Reliquary,” she said as soon as the door was safely shut behind her.

Dionysus’s head and forepaws popped out of her pocket. “And can we take on a whole platoon?”

“That depends. Do you think you could take down twenty-plus angels without drawing attention _and_ do it quickly enough that they can’t call for reinforcements?” Samael snapped.

“Hmmmm.” Dionysus’s nose scrunched again, and before Samael could blink, he’d hooked his claws into her jacket and climbed up it to her shoulder. He peered out the small window of the stairwell door, tail twitching. “Probably not.”

Samael sighed and leaned her head against the door.

“If I might make a suggestion,” Dionysus said.

“I’m all ears.”

“I’m not entirely convinced that there are any brains in our little group whatsoever,” he said, “but if there are …” Once again, Dionysus improbably raised an eyebrow. “They don’t reside with us.”

Samael groaned. “Tell me about it.”

“I think _we_ need to call in reinforcements.”

Samael craned her neck to look out the little window without displacing Dionysus from her shoulder. “This isn’t Hell. We don’t have a warren of corridors to hide in. Once we’re out there, we’ll be _seen_ —”

“Do you have a better idea?” Dionysus asked.

Samael sighed. “No,” she admitted. And then, with a sinking feeling in her stomach, she pulled out her cel-phone and texted two tiny words to Mephistopheles.

**Call me.**

* * *

Deep in the Underworld, seven gods still sat around a gaming table, still stared at a bank of TVs. The gaming table had changed – the map now showed a scale model of Heaven, including each of its many floors – and so had the images on the televisions. And the popcorn was gone, replaced by takeout boxes and a couple plastic bags bearing the name of one of London’s lesser known but much-loved Greek diners.

Beyond that, it was the same players, the same furniture, the same room. And, when one got down to it, slight variations of the same argument that had played out thousands of times over the millennia.

“So,” said Hermes between mouthfuls of souvlaki, “looks like Plan A is a bust.”

“Not at all,” Athena said. Her gaze was still fixed on the screen. “Or at least, not entirely. And. Well. No plan survives first engagement with the enemy.”

“That’s right, this is _your_ hero’s plan, isn’t it?” Eris asked. Her takeout container was completely empty, and she was scoping the still-full ones with an acquisitive eye. “Are you going to eat that?” she asked, pointing to Hera’s half-finished salad. Hera pushed it toward her. “Thanks!”

“So what if it is?” Athena asked.

“Looks like _somebody_ wants to be the sponsoring the hero of the hour,” Eris said. She winked at Hermes. “How long do you think we have before she starts cheating?”

Athena sputtered indignantly, but Hermes only smirked. “I give it fifteen minutes.”

“I _never_ —”

“Maybe ten,” Hermes amended.

“I did not—I do not _cheat_!” Athena gasped. “And—and even if I did, we’re all on the same side for once, so _what_ if Mephistopheles gets a moment to shine—”

“Five,” Hermes said.

“ _Hermes_!”

“Children,” Zeus said, and though the word might have been fond, the undertone of thunder meant business. “Eris, Hermes, stop teasing your sister. Athena, stop letting them wind you up. And all three of you, hush.” He gestured to the bank of televisions, particularly to the lone TV that did not show Heaven. “I think we all need to pay attention now.”

Eris fiddled with the keyboard, and as the gods in the room went quiet, the voices from the television grew louder.

* * *

Mephistopheles had been on edge ever since Samael and Dionysus had left. Doubly so because of how exposed he felt. They were all in a coffee shop not far from Angel station, hoping and – well, in his case, not-quite praying – that the universally acknowledged neutral zone that surrounded all liminals stretched this far. Because if it _didn’t_ , and Hell figured out where they were …

Mephistopheles would have to learn how to swim in Holy Water in a hurry.

And to make matters worse, he knew Samael and Dionysus were in some kind of trouble. Sandalphon wouldn’t be calling him and calling him if _something_ hadn’t gone dangerously awry.

“I told you we should have gone to a pub,” Crowley said to Aziraphale. “This one needs something to take the edge off, and somehow I don’t think Samael’s nicotine patches are going to do the trick.”

“Dear boy, now is not the time to be using extraordinary amounts of alcohol as a coping mechanism,” Aziraphale said. He cast a deliberate glance at the empty paper cups and coffee stirrers that littered their table. “Or extraordinary amounts of coffee. Are we going to need to decaffeinate you before we head Upstairs?”[2]

Crowley shot a brittle grin at Aziraphale and gestured expansively with his latest coffee. “I am fine.”

“You are not. None of us is.”

“I _assssure_ you, angel, I am as _fit_ as a—”

What Crowley was fit as was destined to be lost to time, for at that moment Mephistopheles’s cel-phone buzzed – and it wasn’t (another) call from Sandalphon, but instead a text from Samael.

**Call me.**

Mephistopheles gulped. “It’s, uh, show time.”

Crowley slammed his coffee down. Aziraphale followed suit with no less feeling but a good deal less volume. “Is it?”

Mephistopheles nodded, and, after taking a deep, shaky breath, pressed the call button.

And then – well, he knew what was supposed to happen next. It had all been his idea, after all.

It didn’t make doing it any less nerve-wracking.

Mephistopheles closed his eyes, made his corporation small enough to dance in the spaces between the electrons, and dove into the phone signal, Aziraphale and Crowley following close behind.

In theory, it was a brilliant plan. They could all travel through the phone signals, demon and angel alike,[3] and while Aziraphale had never tried it before, he knew the technique. There was no way the five of them were going to make it past Heaven’s security and no convenient air ducts they could sneak into. But a cel-phone connection – particularly one on archangel protocol, untraced and unwatched – that was their back door, their way in.

In practice, however …

If Mephistopheles hadn’t been too busy maintaining a very respectable fraction of lightspeed as he followed the bright golden signal rushing through the fabric of spacetime, he would have been curled in a ball, not-quite praying that the practice was as simple as the theory.

Because there were so many ways this could go wrong, and for them to go wrong while all of them were at subatomic size, crossing planes on the back of a cel-phone signal …

They’d be _lucky_ if they just got discorporated.

The signal had stopped, had reached an endpoint. Mephistopheles gulped. He jumped for that endpoint—

And spilled out of Samael’s cel-phone, bringing himself back to normal size as his feet hit the floor.

If he hadn’t remembered where he was and what he was trying to do, he would have jumped and whooped. He’d _done_ it! It had _worked_! It had been a mad plan, a ridiculous plan, but it had also been a genius plan _and it had worked_!

Quite possibly the first real grin that had crossed his face since the Fall began to grow—

And died.

This—this didn’t look like Heaven. This looked like—

“Samael,” said a slow, careful voice – Aziraphale’s. “Why are we standing in the stairwell?”

“We have a problem,” said Samael. Her fingers were twitching like they were longing to take hold of a cigarette.

“And relax, this isn’t a setup for a betrayal.” That was Dionysus, perched on Samael’s shoulder – although not for long. He jumped from the shoulder and became himself again in midair. “There’s a platoon of angels between us and the Reliquary, and while Samael and I probably _could_ get past them, we couldn’t do it quick enough to avoid them asking their friends to come and play as well.”

“And without attracting a lot more attention than we want,” Samael said.

“Oh, dear,” Aziraphale murmured. Crowley made a wordless sound that was mostly consonants.

“Which means we need brains, and that means you three,” Dionysus said. “So. Any ideas?”

“Er …” Mephistopheles had no idea how he was the first one to speak, but he was, even as he sidled as close as he dared to the door, trying to glance out without being seen.

What he saw …

He shuddered. He could remember Heaven from Before. All the demons who’d Fallen could. Back then there had been golden light and an endless array of environments to play in and a kindly warmth suffusing everything. Now …

Well, there was light. Lots of it. But it was harsh and sterile, leaving no comforting shadows to hide in. The entire place looked like a warehouse with a shiny coat of paint, slick and spacious and empty. And it was cold.

Though maybe that was just him? He was a demon, after all, cut off from God’s warmth, God’s love …

But when he looked over his shoulder, he saw Dionysus shivering.

So not just demons, then.

Casting another glance out the window, Mephistopheles allowed himself to wonder just what had happened to Heaven before dragging his mind back to the present.

He understood why Samael and Dionysus had called them in. Everything was too—open. There was no way to mount an attack without it being seen. No way to sneak around, either. They’d need to think their way past the platoon that stood between them and the Reliquary.

Mephistopheles scratched his head. “Is there any other way into the Reliquary?”

“No,” Samael said. “It’s a dead end. One way in, one way out. There’s too much important stuff in there.”

“But having a whole platoon guarding it …” Aziraphale began.

Samael winced. “That’s—er, that’s our fault. Hell managed to get a message up to Heaven about—well.”

Crowley blessed fiercely enough that Mephistopheles had to sidle upwind of it.

“Do they know what we’re after?” Aziraphale asked.

“Don’t think so.”

“Well, that’s a … blessing,” Aziraphale said, even if he made a face at the last word, like it left a bad taste in his mouth.

“Right. Well, if there’s only one way into and out of the Reliquary, trying to fight our way past the platoon is suicide. Because even if we get in, there’s no way we’re getting out,” Crowley said. “What we need …”

“Is for the platoon to be elsewhere,” Mephistopheles mused. “Samael—is there anything in Heaven _more_ important than the Reliquary?”

“There …” Samael narrowed her eyes and frowned.

“The archangels’ offices?” Aziraphale asked.

Samael frowned. “I don’t—maybe? We don’t keep any of the important artifacts in there …”

“But,” Mephistopheles said, “but, you said they don’t know what we took. So they might—that is—look, if I wanted to hurt Hell, really _hurt_ it, I wouldn’t take some of the rubbish from the Bins – I’d take the stuff from the Dark Council’s offices. Stuff like plans, and records, and briefings. Things too sensitive for even the Cabinets.”

Samael gasped. “Oh!”

“And,” Crowley went on, “and, Aziraphale – we’ve spent how many centuries doing bloody reports together? This place runs on its paperwork the same as Hell does, doesn’t it?”

“Well, yes, it _is_ a bureaucracy—”

“So imagine what would happen,” Crowley began, a slow grin spreading across his face as he put both hands on Aziraphale’s shoulders, “if we—”

“Let loose some Hellfire in the archangels’ offices! Where all the important records are!” Mephistopheles said for him.

Crowley clicked his tongue and pointed at Mephistopheles. “Bingo.”

“Now we just need to figure out how to get there without getting seen,” Mephistopheles fretted. He wondered if perhaps Samael could sneak off to the Heavenly laundry as he had.

“I think I may be able to help with that,” said a voice from behind him.

And even though Mephistopheles ought to have been expecting something like this—he’d only seen it twice now—he nearly hit the ceiling as he turned around.

“A—Athena?”

She looked much as Zeus and Eris had: translucent, glowing white around the edges. But where Zeus had been grimly pleased and Eris cackling and gleeful, Athena was serene and focused. “Mephistopheles. Well done. You managed to do what no demon has managed in over six thousand years: to sneak bodily into Heaven, and not only that, but to bring several allies with you.”

There was a choking sound from behind him; Mephistopheles ignored it. “I—well, it wasn’t just _me_ —I mean, it wouldn’t have worked without Samael and—”

“But of course. No general can win a battle all alone.” Athena’s smile turned sly. “Even wily Odysseus might have been at a loss, had he been alone in the belly of the Trojan Horse.”

Mephistopheles felt his face start to heat up. How had she known that the Trojan Horse had been what inspired this plan?

“But you, Mephistopheles, have triumphed – and for that,” Athena flicked her wrist, “I present to you these – cloaks woven by my own hand.”

Mephistopheles leaned a little closer. They looked like normal cloaks to him, the type that had gone out of fashion on earth well over a century ago. They were made of tightly woven cloth, and there was Greek style scrollwork around the edges, but beyond that, they didn’t look like anything special.

Athena snapped her fingers, and suddenly one of the cloaks was around Mephistopheles’s shoulders. “The cloak carries with it a glamour; all who look at you while you wear it will see only what they expect to see. But beware, for it is a subtle working. Those who look at you and _know_ what they see will see what is plainly before them – and those who look with eyes of innocence, not letting their expectations cloud their vision, will also see what is true.”

“Th-thank you,” Mephistopheles said, swallowing hard. “But—but Crowley and Aziraphale and Dionysus—”

“Worry not, I have gifts for your troops as well.” Athena waved a hand, and Crowley and Aziraphale were both wearing cloaks as well and looking rather surprised by that fact. She then raised an eyebrow at Dionysus.

Dionysus took a step back and shook his head. “No offense – but I can handle my own costuming.” And with that, Dionysus ran a hand over his front, like he was pulling up a zipper. And suddenly he wasn’t in his jeans and t-shirt, with his wild mane of curls, but was instead dressed in light-colored modern business wear, hair slicked back and eyes faintly glowing.

“As you wish,” Athena said, bowing her head. Then, with one last smile to Mephistopheles, she was gone.

The five of them stood there for a moment – Mephistopheles admiring his cloak, Crowley and Aziraphale examining theirs, and Samael and Dionysus waiting.

At least until Dionysus turned to Samael. “So. How do we get to the archangels’ offices?”

* * *

“See. Told you. She was just looking for an opening to cheat.”

“ _Eris_.”

“You have to admit, Pater, those cloaks were an ass-pull for the ages.”

“ _Hermes_!”

* * *

Aziraphale was grateful that Samael was with them. The archangels’ offices were two floors above and the entire width of the building away from the Reliquary, which was not ideal. Even less ideal was the fact that Aziraphale might not have been able to find them on his own. He couldn’t remember having ever been allowed into the upper sanctum.

Well. According to Crowley, there was _one_ time “he’d” found himself where the archangels did their work.

Aziraphale glanced at Crowley, but it was difficult – he had his hood up (they all did), making it just shy of impossible to read his face. Luckily the face wasn’t all he had to go by. Crowley’s habitual, impossible saunter was tenser and more coiled than usual. His shoulders were very stiff and very still, his entire posture ready to strike.

Crowley was not taking this well. Aziraphale wished he could have taken Crowley’s hand or even just looped an arm through his, offering some small measure of comfort. But impracticalities of the cloaks aside, that sort of thing … just wasn’t done in Heaven. The Almighty loved all Her creations equally, and Her angels must follow suit.

Aziraphale looked next at the backs of Mephistopheles and Samael. Samael was walking at a pace so thoroughly measured and reasonable that it had to be covering up an ungodly amount of tension. Mephistopheles had huddled into his cloak and was sticking almost as close to Samael as Aziraphale was to Crowley.

Finally, he looked over his shoulder at Dionysus, bringing up the rear. Dionysus’s hands were plunged into his pockets (not ideal, that, no high-ranking angel ever went around with their hands just shoved into their pockets like that – and there was absolutely no way Dionysus would pass as anything other than a high-ranking angel), and he walked almost as tensely as Samael. Only where Samael’s tension was of the badly acted, there’s-nothing-to-see-here, please-move-along variety, Dionysus’s was more like a lion pacing its cage.

His eyes – extremely burgundy at the moment, and that was a neat trick – worked their own circuit of the room, and when he did pull his hands out of his pockets, it was to blow on them and rub them together.

Dionysus sensed Aziraphale’s regard then and raised an eyebrow at him. Aziraphale smiled back, because—well, it was what he did. When in doubt or in nerves, smile and hope that would help everything come out all right.

His nerves and his smile and his distraction were probably why he was nearly run over by an angel on one of those ridiculous two-wheeled contraptions that had grown so popular not very long ago – if Crowley’s reflexes had been a shade slower, he _would_ have been run over.

“Sorry!” the angel on the contraption called over their shoulder.

“No harm done!” Aziraphale called back, a little amazed by just how cheerful he sounded. But. Well. When in Heaven—cheerfulness was the _thing_ , one had to be pleasant and put on a smiling face, otherwise …

Aziraphale shook off that thought because it would get him nowhere. He turned to Crowley, mouth opened to thank him.

His mouth went dry and the words fled. Even with his sunglasses shielding half his face, there was absolutely no mistaking the furrow in Crowley’s brow or the frown on his lips. He was worrying, and not about himself, but about Aziraphale, and that—that just wouldn’t _do_ —

“Dear boy,” Aziraphale started, softly, but he didn’t get far.

“What was that?” Mephistopheles asked Samael.

Samael looked over her shoulder. “Sorry, don’t know who that was—”

“No, no, not the angel—the thing they were riding on.”

“Oh!” Samael shuddered. “A _hoverboard_.”

“Like the ones that catch fire?” Dionysus asked.

“Wait—catch _fire_?” Aziraphale heard himself asking. He shot a puzzled glance at Crowley.

“Wasn’t me,” Crowley said automatically, and Aziraphale nearly rolled his eyes. He hadn’t been implying – well, he certainly hadn’t _meant_ to imply – that it had been.

“Well, of course not,” Dionysus replied. “Hoverboards were Eris. She was trying to get mortals to make a real hoverboard – a Marty McFly one – in time for 2015.”

Aziraphale shot another confused glance at Crowley.

“He means a hoverboard that actually hovers,” Crowley translated, “and Eris wanted it in time for 2015 because hovering hoverboards show up in a film that takes place in that year.”

“But then,” Aziraphale was probably going to regret asking this, but in the moment he simply couldn’t stop himself, “why did she stop?”

“Because they started catching fire,” Dionysus replied. “And she thought that was hilarious.”

… He really shouldn’t have been surprised.

Samael made a sudden strangled noise, swerving to the right. The rest of them followed in her wake. Aziraphale dared a quick look to the left, to see what they had avoided.

He winced. Oh, this was the one of the worst consequences of how Heaven was designed! There was no privacy, no real sheltered place where one could have a tête-à-tête. And so even when a conversation really ought to have happened in private … it didn’t.

And this conversation, the one they were skirting round, should have been held privately. Any conversation that involved four interns being read the riot act really shouldn’t happen out in the open where anyone could very nearly stumble into it.

Aziraphale very nearly looked away, except—he thought he recognized those interns—

And then he heard a name he most definitely recognized.

“Really?” asked the riot-act-reader, an angel Aziraphale didn’t recognize. “Crowley ensured that the humans wouldn’t interfere and put themselves in harm’s way? A _demon_?”

Aziraphale came to stop in spite of himself.

The intern in front – oh, Aziraphale _definitely_ recognized her; she was the one who had shot Crowley and been the leader of the little band of angels on the train – had her hands clasped in front of her in a gesture that ought to have been contrite, but the hands wrung a little too much to quite pull it off. “He—he snapped his fingers and all the humans slumped over, ma’am. And there wasn’t anything wrong with them; we— _I_ —would have sensed if he’d done something to hurt them—”

“Crowley is a demon,” the riot-act-reader, a smooth, businesslike sort of angel who put Aziraphale in mind of a slightly less dangerous Michael, “do you really think he would use his powers to protect a group of humans? It’s far more likely that he’d want them awake precisely so they _would_ interfere, so he could use them as a shield or as hostages.”

A sharp, offended noise came from slightly behind Aziraphale, and he couldn’t be certain if Crowley or Dionysus had made it.

“Why are we stopping?” hissed Samael, quietly enough that she wouldn’t be heard by the interns or their disciplinarian.

And Aziraphale couldn’t have told her. But he equally couldn’t have just started walking again.

“But—but he snapped his fingers,” the intern in front said, “and they all slumped over.”

“Now, are you really sure his snapping his fingers is what did that?” the riot-act-reader asked gently. “Remember your training, Liel. Are demons capable of virtue?”

“But he—earlier, the first time I was on Earth, when I was—when I was shooting—he pushed the—the redhead out the way—he made sure—”

“Ah,” the riot-act-reader raised one finger, “ah, I see the confusion. No, that wasn’t virtue. That was instinct – protection of his own young. Even animals are capable of that.”

“But—”

“Liel,” and oh, Aziraphale _knew_ that tone, how often had he heard it aimed at him? The top note was always patience, the middle compassion or understanding, and the base note … the base note was disappointment, because no matter how patient or compassionate the speaker was, they were always so disappointed, because they knew, of course, that one could do so much better if only one simply do as one was told. And the disappointment always lingered long after the patience and the compassion had faded away even in memory.

“Liel, think about it. Think about everything you _know_. Demons can’t feel the virtues. They can’t _show_ the virtues. Even if the demon Crowley did think it was in his interest to keep humans from interfering, it couldn’t have been for a good purpose – it must have been for a bad one. He must have hurt them or—”

“But I didn’t sense any hurt!”

The riot-act-reader stopped, and Aziraphale could hear the knives sharpening in the pregnant pause.

So could Liel; she winced. “S-s-sorry, ma’am.”

“You are forgiven,” the riot-act-reader responded graciously. “Now. Let’s go over this again. Liel, are you really sure that the demon Crowley acted the way he did for the humans’ own good?”

Liel looked down and said nothing for a long moment. And when she did speak, her voice was small, ashamed, and desperately uncertain. “No, ma’am.”

“Very good. Now, moving on—”

Aziraphale couldn’t stand to listen to any more. He turned away and started walking, fast enough that everyone else had to scramble to catch up, Samael and Mephistopheles scrambling even more to get back in front of him so Samael could lead the way.

It made Aziraphale rather ashamed, really. What on earth was the matter with him, listening to conversations that weren’t meant for his ears and then getting upset enough by them that he completely forgot prudence? He should—

“Angel?” asked a soft voice by his ear, followed by a there-and-gone touch to his elbow. Aziraphale looked up to find Crowley watching him with the sort of bone-deep worry even the sunglasses couldn’t hide.

And that just wouldn’t do; if Crowley was going to worry for anyone it ought to be for Ariadne or Dionysus, or even Samael and Mephistopheles for all that they were capable of taking care of themselves, certainly not _him_.

Aziraphale was about to say as much, but Mephistopheles’s soft voice forestalled that. “Is that—normal?”

“Is what normal?” Samael asked.

“The—the way the one angel kept pushing and pushing until Liel wasn’t really sure what she’d seen or sensed anymore.”

Samael tilted her head to one side. “What’s strange about that? Liel thought she saw one thing—and maybe she wasn’t so sure when she thought about it. Hasn’t your memory ever played tricks on you?”

Even from behind and in profile, Aziraphale could see a complicated array of emotions make their way across Mephistopheles’s face, but before he could catalog them, an arm was thrown over his shoulder—his _right_ shoulder, in what was clearly meant to be a reassuring sort of hold.

Aziraphale looked up to see Dionysus wink down at him. “Well!” he said in the sort of jovial tone that really indicated exactly the opposite sort of feeling, “I guess now we all know why there’s no smoking in Heaven.”

Samael stiffened and turned around, wrinkling her nose in confusion. “We do?”

“Certainly. Because clearly, with all the gaslighting that goes on here …” Dionysus sighed and spread his arms. “If one person lights a match, this whole place will go up like Chernobyl.”

Crowley barked out a laugh, but Samael and Mephistopheles exchanged confused glances. “We don’t use gas …” Samael said.

Dionysus sighed and rolled his eyes. “Once we get out of this and get Ari back, I am kidnapping the pair of you, and we’re having a movie year.”

“A movie _year_?” Mephistopheles asked.

“At the rate we’re going, that’s how long it’s going to take.”

Thankfully for all of them – not least Aziraphale, who was finally realizing why a certain play he’d first seen in the Richmond Theatre in 1939 had made him so very uncomfortable – the archangels’ offices were just ahead, forestalling any further conversation.

Not that they looked like anything one familiar with Earth and the conventions of the English language would call an office. There were no walls – no chairs – no bookshelves, no filing cabinets, not even kitschy décor like mugs with sayings like “World’s Best Boss” and “Don’t Talk to Me Until I’ve Had My Coffee” written on them.[4] There were desks, however. Sort of. In truth there were waist-high, pristine white podiums that Aziraphale supposed were meant to fulfill the function generally assigned to desks.

There was also space. A great deal of space. Endless acres of gray tile, windows showing all the sights from the world’s greatest cities, a curved glass ceiling, and … space.

And lastly there was a barrier, clearer than any glass but also more solid than any granite. Aziraphale wasn’t that close to it, but he could feel it pushing him back, informing him in no uncertain terms that he was not authorized to be here and to come back when he had the proper credentials. And if this was how it felt to him, he couldn’t imagine how it felt to Crowley or Mephistopheles or Dionysus—

Not that it felt that way for long. Samael made a complicated gesture against the barrier, and it dropped.

The five of them ambled into the archangels’ offices.

Aziraphale found himself looking around, thinking—well, not really thinking much of anything, truly, because there were a great many things buzzing at the back of his mind that would like to emerge into fully-fledged thoughts, but which Aziraphale did not have the time for, so he was ignoring them. Or trying to, at any rate.

Dionysus was the first to speak. “All right, I give up. How exactly are we supposed to set this place on fire?”

“With Hellfire,” Samael said.

“But …” That was Mephistopheles, looking around nervously. “There’s nothing to burn. When I—when _we_ suggested this—I thought—I thought there’d be something to burn. Even Hellfire needs _something_ to burn.”

“And you’ll get plenty to burn once you light it up,” Samael said. “I designed the shielding in here myself. Hellfire is the one thing it can’t stand against—so when the system detects a catastrophic overload of Hellfire, it self-destructs, sending everything remotely flammable right into the incursion point.”

Aziraphale stared at Samael. So did everyone else.

“Oh for goodness— _think_ about it,” she said. “If there’s that much Hellfire in _here_ , then the midden has well and truly hit the windmill, and it’s much better to destroy all the records than to let them fall into enemy hands. Even Gabriel agreed that I was right about that, and we all know how he loves his paperwork—or, well, _I_ know it, and Aziraphale, _you_ know—”

“Yes, yes, I do know, thank you,” Aziraphale heard himself say before turning away, staring out the wide windows, because—because thinking about Gabriel would lead, inexorably, to things he decidedly had neither the time nor the inclination to think about right now.

He put his hands behind his back to keep them from wringing and tried very hard not to think.

“You said catastrophic overload of Hellfire,” Dionysus said before anyone could remark on Aziraphale’s rudeness. “What exactly is that likely to do to the two people here who are don’t handle Hellfire well – namely _you_ and _me_?”

_And me!_ Aziraphale thought, before remembering, no, no, he was _immune_ to Hellfire, or at least everyone had to _think_ he was immune, because if anyone caught on that he wasn’t immune to Hellfire, then they might also realize that Crowley wasn’t immune to Holy Water, and if they realized _that_ —

“I … well I thought …” Samael started. And stopped.

“Right. So what we need is something that we can light and that will buy us time to get the hell out of Dodge before this place goes boom …” Dionysus started pacing; Aziraphale turned long enough to catch him surveying their surroundings with calculating, glowing eyes. “What about something like a Molotov cocktail—wait, please tell me—”

“I know what a Molotov cocktail is,” Samael interrupted.

“And so does just about everyone in Hell,” Mephistopheles added.

Dionysus grinned.

“And how exactly are we going to do that?” Crowley asked. “You need petrol, and bottles, and some sort of wick, and—”

“No, what you _need_ is a bottle, a flammable liquid, a flame, and a wick. And I can produce two out of four.”

Dionysus snapped his fingers, and on the ground before him five bottles appeared, filled with liquid. “Behold. Bottles. Filled with alcohol. _Very_ flammable. Now, _you all_ have the flame,” he gestured to Mephistopheles and Crowley, “so all we need to do is scrounge up a wick. Don’t suppose anyone has a handkerchief or five to sacrifice to the cause?”

Aziraphale did, but the devil of it was that he only had one, and they’d certainly need more than that—he looked around—

_There!_ One of the desks had paper strewn all over it. “Will paper work?” he asked, already darting closer to the desk.

“Beggars can’t be choosers, so—yes,” Dionysus said.

Aziraphale’s intention was to grab the papers of the desk and dash back. But in order to grab the papers, he had to at least glance at them, and the first thing he saw was that they weren’t technically papers at all. They were photos. Grainy surveillance photos, probably from the Earth Observation records.

The top one was of Ariadne.

Aziraphale stopped dead.

She stood in a crowded public place, with something that looked like a gigantic golf ball rising behind her. On her head was a pair of— _mouse ears_? And she had one hand pressed to her forehead, eyes closed, clearly shaking her head.

The reason for _that_ , at least, was obvious, given that Dionysus (in another set of mouse ears) and – was that Hermes? Wearing a hat that looked like a dog’s face? – were in the foreground of the photograph, arms slung around each other’s shoulders, staggering about in the manner of drunken fools everywhere.

Aziraphale blinked, his mouth going quite dry, and flipped to the next photo before he could stop himself.

Ariadne again. Standing on a balcony, in – oh, that was the sort of dress very popular in Verona in the late 1400s, so perhaps that was where and when the photo was taken? She leaned on the balustrade, cheek on her hand, smiling at—well, the view was from the back, but that had to be Dionysus.

Another picture. Still Ariadne. Standing in the shadows of—that had to be one of the old Greek amphitheaters, in the area that would in later centuries come to be called “backstage.” In one hand she had a wax tablet; her eyes were narrowed, and she seemed to be watching something on the stage very closely—

Aziraphale found himself flipping through photos almost too quickly to keep track of them.

The palace gardens of Versailles. The groundlings’ pit of the Globe, or was it the Rose? The Roman forum. A market in—actually Aziraphale had no idea where that was, could have been anywhere, really, but the photo had been taken in the nineteenth century if what everyone was wearing was anything to go by.

And in every single one of the photos, Ariadne. Holding up a parasol as she wandered through the orangery. Head thrown back in laughter in the pit. Watching an orator in the forum with a faint smirk. Examining a pear in the market, a basket on her arm.

The photographs were shaking. No, Aziraphale realized, no, his _hand_ was shaking. And his heart was pounding fast, and there was something—something like pressure in his chest, all bottled up and ready to blow—

And then there was a soft touch at his elbow, a quiet, “Aziraphale?” near his ear, and Aziraphale exploded.

Sort of. He gathered up the photographs in one hand and stormed back to Dionysus, before he could lose control of himself and do something regrettable. “Your wicks,” he said, and—oh, that tone wasn’t like him at all, certainly not how he ought to sound in Heaven—

He kept talking. “Burn them,” he said, voice catching on something. “The photos, they need—they need to be burned to ash, because—because they had _no right_ —”

“Aziraphale,” said that quiet voice again, and Aziraphale found himself rounding on it.

“They had _no right_ , Crowley!” he said. Except he hadn’t really _said_ it, had he? That was more like a shout, or maybe a yell. “It’s one thing if they spied on us; we made choices; but she—she was just—and Hera said she was _camera-shy_!”

“Wait,” that was Dionysus, and Aziraphale thought he heard something like paper un-crinkling, “are these— _Ari_?! What the fuck?!”

“Samael, Mephistopheles—get this bloody train back on track, will you?” Crowley snapped over his shoulder. And before Aziraphale could quite work out what that meant, he was being walked backward several steps, gathered into Crowley’s arms, and— _oh_ , there were Crowley’s wings, springing out despite the blasted cloak and wrapping around them both—

Aziraphale shuddered and leaned into the embrace, eyes closing. In his weaker moments – and there had been many of them – he’d fantasized about this, being held and wrapped up and _safe_ in Crowley’s arms, before telling himself sternly that he was being foolish, because even if, somehow, they fought their way past the angel and demon bit (which they couldn’t, how could they?), _he_ was supposed to keep _Crowley_ safe, because Crowley was impulsive and reckless, and everyone knew that Crowley’s lot didn’t just send rude notes—

Except now—now that those shameful little dreams were coming true—Aziraphale was finding that he didn’t want to be safe; he wanted—he wanted—

“Lisssten,” Crowley was saying, and if the hiss was coming out, then Aziraphale was very much afraid that Crowley had been speaking for some time and he hadn’t been paying attention. “Lissten, we’re going to fix thisss, right, angel? You and me and Dionysssusss and Sssamael and Mephissstopheles. Firsst, we’re going to blow up the wankersssss’ officesss, and then we’re going to sssteal one of their most pricelessss treasuressss, and then, when we’ve got Ariadne back, we’re going put all our headsss together and we’re going to figure out how to make sure Heaven and Hell _never_ bother usss again, all right?”

Aziraphale looked up. Opened his eyes. Watched Crowley’s face. And asked, to his shame, “Do you promise?”

“ _Yessssss_ ,” Crowley said, and that—that might have been the end of it, or at least the restoration of Aziraphale’s equilibrium, but for one thing.

There were four archangels standing behind Crowley. They had stopped dead. Three of them – Uriel, Michael, and Sandalphon – were not looking at Aziraphale and Crowley. And of those three, Uriel was the first to speak. “Samael, what on earth are you doing?”

But one of them. One of them was looking at Aziraphale.

And he had something quite different to say.

“ _Traitor_!” Gabriel shouted, pointing right at Aziraphale.

And, well, there was really only one thing Aziraphale could say to that.

“Oh, _fuck_.” 

* * *

[1] At least, any more than anyone else in Hell was planning betrayal at any given moment.

[2] Not that Aziraphale had room to talk. He’d ordered at least six cups of tea since Samael and Dionysus had left, and that wasn’t counting the one he’d gotten for Mephistopheles because “a cuppa will do you no end of good, my dear.” The warmth between Mephistopheles’s hands had indeed felt good, so perhaps Aziraphale was on to something.

[3] Although not Dionysus, hence his trip Upstairs in Samael’s pocket.

[4] Aziraphale was a sworn afficionado of kitsch, but even he had his limits, and those sorts of mugs were decidedly on the wrong side of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Tag to Mind**
> 
> **Gaslighting:** Our Heroes pass by a group of interns (the ones who approached Aziraphale & Dionysus on the train) getting read the riot act by a senior angel. The lead intern, Liel, is insisting that "Crowley" knocked the humans out while they were on the train in order to keep those humans out of harm's way. The senior angel is having none of this and gaslights Liel until she backs down from her claim that "Crowley" was not trying to help the humans.
> 
> If you'd like to skip this bit, stop reading at "“Really?” asked the riot-act-reader" and start up again “Very good. Now, moving on—” 
> 
> Also, there is some discussion of what they saw afterward. All that happens in the discussion is that Mephistopheles asks if this is normal, Samael doesn't see what the problem is, and Aziraphale starts to get more upset - prompting Dionysus to make a joke at Heaven's expense in an attempt to make him feel better ("Why is there no smoking allowed in Heaven? Because with all the gaslighting that goes on, if one person lights a match, the whole place will go up like Chernobyl.") If you want to skip that, start reading again at “If one person lights a match, this whole place will go up like Chernobyl.” 
> 
> And with that being said, you know the drill - thanks for reading, don't be shy about leaving a comment, and say hi on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/) if you're so inclined!


	27. You’ve Yet to Have Your Finest Hour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, we have ourselves a **mind the tags** chapter! You know the drill - the tags you'll want to mind are in the end notes.

“This is because of the David Bowie comment, isn’t it?” Ariadne said. Her hands were on her hips, and she glared at what lay in the little valley below them. “I make one crack about the Goblin King, and now I’m dealing with another labyrinth.”

“As tempting as it is to ascribe cause and effect to that remark … no,” Eloise said. “The hedge maze was here long before you said that.”

Ariadne snorted.

Eloise replied with a baleful glance. “Ariadne. I may not tell you everything I know, but I won’t lie to you.”

The tone was tinged with _just_ enough hurt and disappointment that Ariadne found herself staring at the grass between her toes.

“Although I will admit that the choice may not have been optimal,” Eloise mused. “Still, it doesn’t mean what you think it means.”

Ariadne looked up, one eyebrow raised. “And what do you think I think it means?”

Eloise looked not at Ariadne but at Asterion, who was surveying the labyrinth below them with a pensive expression. “Oh, we both know what you think it means,” she said. And then, with scarcely a blink, she turned back to Ariadne. Her eyes, blue as a storm-tossed sea, seemed to see right through Ariadne. “But it’s not about imprisonment or fear. The hedge maze is about choices and the making of them.”

“Choices,” Ariadne murmured, and she gave the labyrinth another look.

The labyrinth spread out over the valley floor, a riot of hedges covered in pink flowers – roses, maybe? There was a rosy scent in the air, and roses did come pre-equipped with thorns. As far as Ariadne could tell, there was no particular order to the paths and no obvious traps in store. Just hedges, and roses, and grass.

And in the center of the maze, a tree. Covered in blossoms. And apples. It towered above the hedges, swaying in the gentle breeze.

“Tell me,” Ariadne said, “did Crowley have to lead Adam and Eve through this maze to get them to enjoy their first taste of forbidden fruit?”

Eloise chuckled. “No. There was no hedge maze back then. Wouldn’t have been a point to it. And he only tempted Eve, not Adam.”

Ariadne blinked. “Wait—that bit was _true_?”

“Which bit?”

“Eve being the one to eat the apple.”

“Yes? Or rather—they both did, but Eve was the one who Crowley talked to, and Eve then convinced Adam.” Eloise tilted her head to one side. “Why wouldn’t you think that was true?”

“Misogyny.”

Eloise blinked, then nodded slowly. “Fair enough. So. Shall we?”

“In a minute,” Ariadne replied. And then, without another word, she snapped her wings open and took to the air. A birds-eye view of the labyrinth would—

No sooner had Ariadne looked at it then the labyrinth swayed, and twisted, and scrambled before her eyes. Ariadne squeezed them shut before the swirling vortex of green could give her a headache and landed.

Asterion huffed inquisitively, but Eloise snorted. “ _Really_ , Ariadne? I told you this was about choices, and your first choice was to cheat?”

“I prefer to think of it as gathering intelligence,” Ariadne replied, rubbing the bridge of her nose and trying to blink the watering out of her eyes. “See if I can map out a route before I go in there blind.”

“And you expect me to believe you weren’t going fly all the way to the Tree if you’d been allowed?” Eloise scoffed.

“No,” Ariadne admitted. “But you said my first choice was to cheat. And that wasn’t my _first_ choice.” _If only because I don’t think whoever is running this show is_ quite _that stupid – though I’d love to be pleasantly surprised._

Ariadne knew for a fact that she kept the latter part of that sentence firmly locked behind her teeth, but Eloise glared at her as if she’d said heard it anyway. Which was more than a bit unnerving.

“Now,” Eloise asked, in a manner that suggested she would be quite displeased if she had to ask a third time, “shall we?”

In answer, Ariadne turned to Asterion. “Well? You ready?”

Asterion tilted his head to one side but nodded readily enough. Strange – the idea of the labyrinth didn’t seem to bother him the way it did Ariadne.

Maybe Eloise had had a point about what this labyrinth was for. Or maybe there was a difference between being locked in a labyrinth of stone hidden underground and entering a hedge maze under a clear blue sky of your own free will. Or maybe Asterion had simply developed better coping mechanisms in their time apart.

_Maybe the capybara’s a therapist_ , Ariadne thought, and the notion made her nearly laugh out loud in a way that probably would have convinced everyone who heard her that she needed to have a few long sessions with Dr. Capybara.

They made their way down the grassy hillside, the sword – conveniently not on fire and now affixed to Ariadne’s waist thanks to a makeshift scabbard – gently bumping Ariadne’s thigh at every step. It didn’t take long for them to reach the entrance of the labyrinth.

Before Ariadne set foot inside it, she examined the entrance. “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” this was not. The hedges gave way to a rose trellis that looked more like the entrance to a summertime bower or an outdoor wedding than to a …

_Candy-coated heart of darkness_ , Ariadne thought in John C. Reilly’s voice.

Then she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and went in, Eloise and Asterion on either side.

Two steps into the maze, she had a choice to make. The path branched left and right. But if the view from the top of the hill had been accurate, the Tree was straight ahead.

Ariadne put her hands on her hips and thought. Eloise said nothing, though her watchful look was telling. And Asterion simply looked left and right, curious.

Ariadne, however, looked at the scabbard by her side.

She _was_ carrying a sword. And the fastest way to the Tree was straight through.

With a flourish that owed more to Errol Flynn than any legionary, Ariadne drew the sword and advanced on the hedge. A machete would be better for this kind of work – and really, it was a good thing the sword hadn’t decided to light itself, because a labyrinth on fire was not something Ariadne wanted to deal with this century – but she would make do with what she had—

Two vines snaked out and wrapped around the sword, tugging it closer.

“ _Hey_! What the—”

“Cheating!” Eloise said.

“Taking a third option!” Ariadne grunted, trying to pull the sword back.

The vines nearly tugged the sword from her hand; Ariadne dug her heels in and tightened her grip.

“Ariadne—” Eloise started, but another tug from the vines destroyed any desire Ariadne had to pay attention to her. Her wings mantled, ready to start flapping and give her an extra bit of strength if she needed it—

Asterion huffed, though there may have been a groan at the end of it. Then – as if his sister wasn’t playing tug-of-war over a sword with some quasi-sentient vines – he stomped to the hedge and parted some of the leaves.

Deep in the branches was a nest. By one side of the nest was a rock dove. Inside it was another rock dove, her wings curled protectively over two squabs.

“Oh,” Ariadne said, and her grip on the sword loosened.

The vines chose that moment to let go, sending Ariadne sprawling on her ass—or she would have gone sprawling if Eloise hadn’t grabbed her arm and kept her upright.

Ariadne glanced at Eloise, expecting another accusation of cheating or worse. But Eloise was watching Asterion with something like wonder.

Asterion’s reply was to snort and shake his head.

Ariadne looked between the two of them; then she sighed and sheathed the sword. “Ok, fine, you two win – no hacking my way through. So. Let’s go?”

“Let’s—” Eloise started, then jumped, staring at the hand that was still holding Ariadne’s elbow. She quickly let go and took a step back. “Right. Let’s go. Which way, Ariadne?”

Ariadne looked left and right again. Yet she couldn’t see a turning in either direction that would take her in the direction she wanted to go.

She sighed. Apparently it was a coin toss. With that, she nodded and went left.

“Interesting choice,” Eloise said, falling into step beside her.

“If you really think there’s some sort of …” Ariadne waved a hand vaguely, “design or moral weight behind me deciding to go left … I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Choices are choices,” Eloise replied, putting both hands behind her back and ambling beside Ariadne at a leisurely pace – despite the fact that Ariadne’s pace was anything but leisurely.

They walked in silence for some time, Ariadne keeping her eyes peeled for a pathway or a cut in the hedge or _something_ that would let her get closer to her destination. But she couldn’t find one. And though the path they were on did twist and turn enough that Ariadne began to wonder if she might just lose her sense of direction, there didn’t seem to be any way off it.

That was … odd. Wasn’t choosing which way to go the whole point of a labyrinth?

Ariadne was still pondering that when the path turned – and she nearly walked into another rose trellis.

She stopped dead and narrowed her eyes at it.

This one was covered in black and red roses that snaked – yes, there was no other word for it, _snaked_ – over the woodwork. Which was also painted black. And in the middle of the trellis was not a clear view to the other side, but a harsh black mist.

Ariadne’s hand went to the sword of its own accord—but she stopped herself before pulling it out.

“The sword won’t do you any good,” Eloise said, not unkindly. “This isn’t that kind of test.”

“Test,” Ariadne said blankly. “And I suppose flying over the trellis would be cheating?”

“What do you think?”

Ariadne thought she wasn’t in the mood to try it and find out. “So the only way out is through.”

“Hmm, yes and no,” Eloise said. “You’re always free to turn back and leave the maze if—”

“ _No_ ,” Ariadne snapped. She needed to get out of here – to get back to Dionysus, Aziraphale, Crowley, all her friends, all her _family_ – and leaving the maze wasn’t going to get her home.

And even if she just decided to go right instead of left – well, whatever bastard was running this show had probably put up another rose trellis with some freaky mist on that side, too.

Ariadne sighed, took the belt and scabbard off, and handed both to Asterion. “Would you hold this, please?”

Asterion blinked, but he took it, head tilted to the side.

Eloise seemed startled. “Wait, Ariadne—”

“You just said it wasn’t that kind of test,” Ariadne said, rounding on her. “And you said you wouldn’t lie to me. So if it’s not that kind of test, there’s no reason for me to risk losing the sword, not after everything I went through to get it.”

And then Ariadne raised an eyebrow, daring Eloise to contradict her.

Eloise smiled and chuckled. “Ah. It seems you’re not the only one being tested here.”

“Bingo,” Ariadne answered. “Although, one last thing before I go?”

Eloise tilted her head to one side, a mute invitation to go on.

“If you talk to your boss while I’m gone, ask him – or her – why, if I’m somehow supposed to convince Heaven and Hell to sit down and shut up, _cheating_ is such a bad thing. Because if there’s a fight out there can be won by playing fair? _That_ isn’t it.”

And without waiting for Eloise’s reply, Ariadne flipped her hair over her shoulder and stormed into the mist.

* * *

When the mist rolled away, Ariadne was in—another cave?

No, not a cave. Those walls were concrete, not stone. On one wall was a window giving out onto a gray, rain-drenched London; on another there was a framed sketch of the Mona Lisa. And there was a ridiculously gilt desk paired with an equally ridiculous chair, the likes of which she hadn’t seen since Versailles.

Still. It _looked_ like a cave. A dark, gloomy, miserable cave. Was this … someone’s house? Or apartment? But who would choose to live like this?

“Ariadne.”

Ariadne jumped nearly out of her skin and turned to the voice.

It was coming from the television in the next room, which had flickered to life, showing what looked like a talk-show set – a stage, some couches – and—

Two men. Or man-shaped beings. One had black hair and a chameleon on his head. The other—

The other was the white-haired demon from the alley. And what was it Crowley had said about Hell and TVs? If demons took over a TV and started talking to her …

_“If they ever do, you run, you hear me? Get away from whatever thing that’s talking to you at top speed. I don’t care what you have to do or who you have to hurt to do it.”_

“Oh, fuck,” Ariadne murmured.

“Ariadne,” that was the demon from the alley, “did you really think we wouldn’t figure out who you are? _What_ you are? You’re dead meat, Ariadne. You’re bloody history.”

_Shiiiiiit!_

“You stay where you are. We’re coming to collect you,” alley-demon went on.

“Oh _fuck_ no!” Ariadne shouted – then she grabbed the first thing that came to hand (a decorative box) and whipped it at the television.

The box crashed into the TV with a highly satisfying shatter of glass and shower of sparks.

But that would only buy her so much time. She needed to get out of here before those two demons showed up—

A doorbell buzzer rang through the apartment—house—wherever she was. And a sickening sing-song voice followed it. “Ariadne!”

Ariadne swore under her breath. She needed—

She barely had a chance to glance at the window when she heard something—a slight swoosh. She turned—

The Mona Lisa sketch had swung away from the wall, revealing a safe. The safe’s lock was spinning, and it too opened, revealing … a thermos.

Ariadne blinked and looked more closely.

A _tartan_ thermos.

She ran to the safe and grabbed the thermos. It buzzed under her hand with a feeling like the white-hot smiting anger. She started to unscrew the cap, spinning on one heel—

And stopped dead. There were three things on the desk that hadn’t been there before. A red bucket. A green squirt bottle. And a pair of elbow-length black rubber gloves.[1]

“Ariadne!”

The voice was coming closer.

Then, a second voice: “We only want a little word with you!”

She spun the cap off and sent it flying across the room. In the thermos was—

Water?

No. Or not just water. Water that sparked and buzzed with power. She’d felt water like this before – one could hardly inhabit Europe for most of the Middle Ages and Renaissance and avoid it – but never quite this concentrated, this potent.

_Holy_ Water. And if the tartan thermos was anything to go by, the source of it had probably been Aziraphale. And Ariadne had made enough horror movies to know that Holy Water and demons did not mix – to say nothing of her own personal experience with the stuff.

But that thermos was hardly—

Ariadne tilted her head to one side and looked more carefully at her tools. A bucket. A pair of gloves. A squirt bottle. But the squirt bottle was just some green plastic, wasn’t it? So there was no reason why the green plastic couldn’t be in a slightly different shape—

“We know you’re in there!” said the first voice.

“Ariadne!” called the second.

Ariadne stopped woolgathering and got to work. And by the time the door to the little study opened, she was ready.

The chameleon-demon was the first to come through. His eyes were narrowed, suspicious.

And they blinked madly when they found Ariadne. Which didn’t take long, since she was standing right in front of him. Holding a green squirt gun and pointing it directly at his head.

“What the Heaven?” he asked.

Ariadne smirked. “Say hello to my little friend,” she said in an accent was – if she was being perfectly honest with herself – not quite as good as Al Pacino’s, but close.

And pulled the trigger.

Over the course of roughly a thousand years in Europe when humans had been tossing Holy Water here, there, and everywhere, Ariadne had been hit with it a few times. Usually, it was just a few drops. And usually, it stung like a mother. But it wasn’t exactly _damaging._

Still, there was a difference between a half-demon getting hit with a few stray drops of human-blessed H2O and a full demon getting a concentrated stream of pure angelic Holy Water right between the eyes. It was the difference between a pebble rolling down a hill and a rockslide. An ice cube and an iceberg. A molehill and a mountain.

First, the Holy Water went through the demon, eating a hole through his skull like acid and nearly spraying alley-demon, except he’d jumped backward. Then—

Then the demon screamed. And melted. While on fire. Ariadne stumbled back, jaw dropped, one hair-twitch from screaming herself as the demon dissolved into a smoking puddle of goo and a black leather trench coat.

_And your little dog, too,_ came a faintly hysterical voice in Ariadne’s head, even though she’d been on set when they sent Margaret Hamilton through the trapdoor—

The second demon, alley-demon, picked up where the first left off on the screaming, dancing around the gently steaming remains of his companion and into the room. “That’s-that’s—that’s—HOLY WATER!” he shouted, pointing at the smoking puddle and then staring at Ariadne. “I should—I can’t believe—even a half-demon, even _Crowley’s_ daughter, would—HOLY WATER! That’s—that’s—he’d done nothing to you!”

That snapped Ariadne out of her stupor. “Are you kidding me? _You_? You say that to _me_? After what you did?” she shouted. Then she whipped the squirt gun up. “Now _stay back_.”

The demon caught his breath, head tilted to one side. “You—you don’t frighten me.”

“I don’t _have_ to, I just—” Ariadne went to squeeze the trigger—

The demon was a split-second faster than she was. A jet of flame erupted from his palm; Ariadne shrieked and dropped the gun—it skittered under the desk—

“Time to go, Ariadne!” the demon snapped, and the phone behind Ariadne rang.

She ignored it. Time for plan B.

“Sorry,” she said, grabbing the bucket off the desk, “but this Dorothy ain’t surrendering.”

She tossed the bucket’s contents at the demon, just like Judy Garland.

The demon screamed.

But he didn’t melt. It wasn’t Holy Water in the bucket. There had only been enough to fill the squirt gun. But that didn’t matter—all Ariadne needed was a little time—

She slammed the bucket on his head, kicked him in the solar plexus, and pushed him into the safe she’d made bigger just before the demons had crashed into the room. Still screaming, the demon stumbled into the safe.

Ariadne slammed the door shut, spun the lock, and snapped the safe back to its original size. She had no idea how long that would hold the demon, but all she needed was a few seconds.

A burst of power blew out the window and most of the wall with it. Ariadne’s wings extended as she ran toward it.

But before she left, she couldn’t resist one last glance over her shoulder, one last parting shot to the screaming demon in the safe.

“So long, suckers!”

And she jumped.

* * *

Ariadne hit the ground far sooner than she was expecting, and the ground she hit was not a rainy, paved London street but soft, dry grass.

She stumbled forward a couple of steps, then spun on one heel. What she saw—

Was a rose trellis covered in black-and-red roses. Only now she was on the far side of it, and instead of black mist, all that lay inside it was a clear view to the other side, where Eloise and Asterion were standing. Asterion had covered his eyes with one hand; the other still held the sword.

Eloise patted him lightly on the shoulder. “You can open your eyes now; she’s fine.”

Two of Asterion’s fingers parted in a sideways Vulcan salute; one eye peeked open. Ariadne sent a shaky smile and wave his way.

Asterion whuffed with relief and ran through the trellis, catching Ariadne in his arms. Ariadne didn’t question it, just held on tight.

“I’m ok,” she said. She pulled back enough to look him in the eye. “Really. I’m fine. Didn’t get a drop of Holy Water on me or anything.”

“Unlike Ligur. May he find rest.” Something flickered across Eloise’s face – something that, in another context, Ariadne might have called _wistfulness_ or _disappointment_ or even _sorrow_ – but whatever it was, it was gone too fast for Ariadne to be sure she’d even seen it.

Besides, she had other things to worry about. Like that name, Ligur; she was sure she had heard it before. “Who?” Ariadne asked.

“Ligur. Duke of Hell? One of your father’s old—well, I suppose you could call him a line manager,” Eloise mused. “The one with the chameleon on his head?”

That answered one question, where she’d heard the name before – Crowley must have mentioned it. But the rest raised about a dozen in its place.

Ariadne blinked and shook her head. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Oh, Crowley really didn’t tell you much, did he?” Eloise tutted.

“He …” Ariadne disentangled one arm from Asterion’s hold to rub her temple. “We were kind of – things were told on a need-to-know basis, and … he didn’t talk much about Hell.”

But what he had said … Ariadne didn’t shudder, because it would only upset Asterion, but she remembered the way Crowley had launched himself out of the Bentley on that morning in Jasmine Cottage. How hard he’d breathed, when he’d remembered to do it, how he’d shuddered. What he had said about what Hell would do to Ariadne if they caught up with her, and more importantly, what he _hadn’t_ said.

He’d been _scared_. And Crowley did not strike her as the sort of person who scared easily.

Ariadne gulped hard enough that Asterion pulled away and looked her over carefully. He patted the top of her head.

“Thanks,” Ariadne said, flashing him a smile. In the second she took to do that, something else caught up with her. _May he find rest._

“Wait,” Ariadne said, staring again at the trellis. “Did I—did I _kill_ Ligur?” On the one hand she couldn’t imagine anyone or anything surviving melting like that – and he’d seemed just as eager as the other one to turn her into “bloody history,” so it wasn’t like she’d had much of a choice – but—

“Oh, certainly not,” Eloise said. “He wasn’t here in Eden any more than Theseus was.”

Eloise hooked her arm through Ariadne’s, somehow, and then, gently and inexorably, guided her forward. Asterion let her go, but Ariadne groped for his hand to take him with her.

“And of course,” Eloise went on, as if she hadn’t just decided to move them all along, never mind what Asterion or Ariadne might have to say about the matter, “Ligur was dead well before you got here. Crowley and his bucket of Holy Water took care of that.”

Ariadne stopped short, and Eloise and Asterion perforce had to stop, too. “ _What_?”

Eloise turned back, brows furrowed and head tilted to one side. “What?”

“That—” Ariadne looked over her shoulder, staring at the black trellis with its black and red roses, looking so innocent and so sinister in the merry sunshine. “That was—how much of that was real?”

Eloise knit her brows. “Well, it depends on what you mean by real—”

“There was a bucket,” Ariadne stammered. “A red bucket. And—and we were in London—did—did Ligur and the other one—”

“Hastur,” Eloise supplied helpfully.

“Whatever—white-hair—did they—did they go after Crowley?”

“Oh, yes.”

“The way—they way they went after me?”

“Indeed,” Eloise replied, and—why did she sound so _cheerful_? “They acted toward you just as they acted toward him—well, obviously there were some differences, because you reacted differently than he did—”

_“You’re dead meat,”_ Ariadne heard Hastur say to her again. _“You’re bloody history.”_ And _“You stay where you are. We’re coming to collect you.”_

“ _Why_?” she demanded.

“Oh. Oh, dear,” Eloise murmured. “Well, the immediate cause was that they found out that Crowley had lost the Antichrist. And they also found out about Aziraphale. And, well. They’d never exactly liked Crowley to begin with.”

The heart Ariadne technically didn’t have was hammering very, very quickly. “And—and what would they have done to Crowley if they’d gotten to him?”

_“You’re dead meat. You’re bloody history.”_

“My dear,” Eloise said, and maybe Ariadne was starting to lose it a bit, because something in the way she said it reminded her of Aziraphale, “are you sure you want to know?”

Phrased that way? No, no, Ariadne didn’t. Or rather, she didn’t need to be told, because she’d already guessed.

She gulped and asked again, “ _Why_?”

This time Eloise didn’t answer. Probably because Eloise understood that _why_ for what it was – not a serious question, more of a statement of protest lodged with the universe at large. Eloise unhooked her arm from Ariadne’s and patted her hand.

As for Ariadne, it was all she could do to keep walking, glad that there were no forks in the path, no choices she had to set everything to the side and make. She swallowed hard. “I see why you – or your boss – is not fond of Hell.”

“I’m afraid no one is fond of Hell, which is half the trouble with it,” Eloise answered. “Not even the people who make it what it is, more’s the pity.”

“No wonder Crowley decided Armageddon wasn’t worth …” Ariadne trailed off, gasping. “Wait.”

“Hmm?”

“You said—you said they were after Crowley because he _lost_ the Antichrist. Not because he helped the Antichrist to call off Armageddon.”

“Oh, he hadn’t done that yet,” Eloise said. “That was the ultimate plan, of course, but things got knocked a little off kilter—”

Ariadne spun and grabbed Eloise by both shoulders. Asterion made a faint noise of alarm. “What are they going to do to him now that he _has_?”

“They already tried to get their revenge for that,” Eloise said gently, now reaching up to pat Ariadne’s hands. Both at once. It was a bit disconcerting, how easily she did that. “They failed. Publicly. And no, I won’t tell you the details. You’ll have to ask Aziraphale and Crowley about that, and I want to warn you, they might not tell you everything.”

Ariadne shuddered and turned away. Asterion patted her head again. “Thanks,” she heard herself mutter, even as she tried to send a reassuring smile Asterion’s way.

By the way Asterion raised his eyebrows, Ariadne could tell that he was not reassured.

They kept walking. The hedges with their roses looked the same as they had since Ariadne entered this place. The only change was the angle of the sun in the sky.

“So,” Ariadne asked after a few minutes, after she’d found her voice again, “what exactly was I supposed to learn from that little episode? That the best way to get Hell off our backs would be to have Aziraphale bless a few ponds and send every god I know down into Hell, armed with a super soaker?”

Ariadne wasn’t sure what she had hoped for or expected after that. Expected, maybe a scoff. Hoped for, maybe a laugh. She got neither. Instead, Eloise watched her sorrowfully. “I hope there’s a better way to resolve this than with violence.”

“Sometimes you have to blow up a Death Star or two to save the galaxy,” Ariadne pointed out.

“Well, yes, sometimes,” Eloise agreed, sighing. “But that’s not very fair to the stormtroopers inside, now, is it? After all … very few of them actively chose to be where they were.”

_Choices again,_ Ariadne thought. There was something she was supposed to grasp there; she could sense it.

As if on cue, the three of them rounded a bend and found themselves facing another rose trellis.

This trellis was the exact size and shape of the other one – and Ariadne would not be surprised if the roses had been configured the exact same way, down to the petal – but this one was painted blinding white, and the roses that climbed up it were mostly white and cream, with some pale blue and pale red ones thrown in. If roses had come in the same beige that Aziraphale favored in his tartan, Ariadne would have expected to see that. And inside the trellis, instead of black mist, there was white mist.

Ariadne sighed. “Let me guess – I’m about to find out how Heaven violently took exception with everything Aziraphale did _before_ helping the Antichrist to tell Heaven where to stick it?”

“Mmm. Not quite,” Eloise said. “But—Ariadne.” A hand found its way onto her shoulder. “Are you sure you’re ready? You can take a moment to breathe, you know.”

Ariadne didn’t answer. Instead, she watched the swirling mist in the trellis and remembered something Crowley had told her the day they met.

_“Ariadne—look. The thing is. Hell? Hell isn’t nice, and it isn’t good. Heaven claims to be both, but between you, me, and the angel? They’re lying.”_

If Eloise was to be trusted, then somehow _Ariadne_ was responsible for telling both sides to take a long walk off a short pier and holding them to that. And Hell had already tried to kill (or worse) Crowley once. Actually twice, if Eloise’s hints were anything to go by, and Aziraphale had been caught up in the second time. And then there was the fight at the bookshop, and the three angels and three demons who had jumped her in the alley, led by that Gabriel who had introduced himself as _your dad’s old boss_.

Heaven and Hell were probably not sitting pretty, resting on their halos/horns.

“You know, I really don’t think I can,” Ariadne said. “I don’t suppose the sword will do me any good this time?”

“Once again, I’m afraid not.”

She tilted her head at Asterion. “Mind still holding onto it for me?”

Asterion made a faint distressed noise, but he shook his head.

“Thanks.” Ariadne hovered just high enough to pat Asterion’s head and give him a quick scratch behind the ears.

Then, gulping, she dropped to the ground and ran into the mist.

* * *

Once again, Ariadne went sprawling onto a surface that wasn’t what she was expecting. But this one …

She took the half-second she needed to get her bearings and reconnoiter her surroundings. Now she was in—well, it looked like a car dealership, only one that had every trace of warmth, comfort, and human touch systematically removed.[2] White surrounded her on every side – white walls, white floors, white columns, blinding white fluorescent lights. Even the floor-to-ceiling windows gave out onto a wall of white, like the inside of a cloud. And she _hurt_ , that same all-over ache she’d felt when she’d first woken up in Eden.

_Oh, fantastic,_ Ariadne though, and then, slowly, every instinct on high alert and her nonexistent heart beating fast to send nonexistent adrenaline flowing through her nonexistent veins, turned around.

There was a line of beings opposite her in every single shape, racial/ethnic composition, and gender variant humans had thought to name, and quite a few they hadn’t gotten around to naming yet. And they were dressed identically. Cream jackets with gold buttons and epaulets, brown tartan kilts, white socks, white shoes, white chin straps. From hand to hand they passed a folded-up bundle of clothes that seemed to be another uniform, topped with a white helmet.

At the fore of the line was a waist-high white podium. And behind that podium stood a man-shaped being dressed in the same sort of uniform and sporting the most ridiculous pair of mutton chops Ariadne had seen this side of the nineteenth century, and considering she’d spent the nineteen-sixties, -seventies, and -eighties in California? That was saying something.

Were those … angels? And was this …

Ariadne looked around again.

Heaven?

For a brief second she thought of the hermits, the anchorites, the stylites, the flagellants, the ascetics, the _martyrs_ – all of the humans in the Abrahamic traditions who had said no to an extra dessert or sex with a willing partner or a fair shake in life or _life itself_ in the belief that their reward in Heaven would be great.

And she pitied them.

“You! You’re late.”

Ariadne jumped only to see mutton-chops glaring at her.

She almost asked what she was late for, but decided against it. Better to pretend she knew what was going on and how she’d come to be here.

Instead, she walked – hobbled, really – across the wide blank white tiles, closer to mutton-chops’ desk and past a free-floating, rotating model of Earth. “Afraid so. Sorry?”

Mutton-chops didn’t seem to care about her apology. “Ariadne, isn’t it?” he asked. He began to scribble on the clipboard in front of him. “Daughter of Aziraphale? Principality, Angel of the Eastern Gate?”

“That would be me,” Ariadne said slowly – she doubted there’d be any denying it – watching not mutton-chops but the soldiers behind him. There were a lot of them, and only one of her, and with no flaming sword or Hellfire flamethrower on her side, she _really_ didn’t want to find out how a fight between her and them would go—

“Your father’s whole platoon is waiting for you,” mutton-chops said, and he shoved a uniform at Ariadne quickly enough that she took it out of instinct.

“Wait, what?” Ariadne asked.

Mutton-chops didn’t seem to hear her. “Ariadne … Ariadne … why is that name so familiar …”

Ariadne could think of several reasons why – labyrinths, Asterion, Theseus, Dionysus, and oh, yes, the fact that a significant contingent of Heaven and Hell wanted her dead because of who her parents were – but since there were quite a few soldiers around and only one of her, she shrugged and played dumb.

Mutton-chops flipped through the pages on his clipboard. “Hang on … Ariadne! You were issued with—”

“ _Issued_? Who was issuing _me_ anything?” Ariadne asked.

Mutton-chops didn’t seem to be listening. His head whipped up, eyes wide and furious. “You were issued with a body!” He looked her up and down. “Where is it?”

Ariadne jumped. “Excuse me? You’re asking _me_? Why don’t you talk to your Archangel of Destruct—”

_… Wait …_

Something in the back of Ariadne’s mind was jumping up and down, demanding her attention, and this time, she listened to it.

Samael had had Ariadne completely outclassed and probably could have killed her outright with the same amount of effort Ariadne would have put into swatting a fly, but she hadn’t. She’d just discorporated her. And more than that, she’d _told_ Ariadne she was going to do that and had even told Ariadne to get herself someplace that wasn’t Heaven or Hell. Ariadne hadn’t understood what she was on about, but that was hardly Samael’s fault.

Every other angel and demon in that alley had wanted her dead—or had they? Mephistopheles, the quiet demon from the bookshop, he’d barely done anything to her except pass her off to Samael—and he’d apologized before he’d done it—

If Samael and Mephistopheles hadn’t wanted her dead—if they’d been working together to keep her not-dead …

Well, she certainly couldn’t blow Samael’s cover with mutton-chops.

So Ariadne blinked, and shrugged, and blew the dust off her most winning smile and put it on display. “Sorry, I think it got—discorporated? That’s the word, right?”

Mutton-chops’ eyebrows had almost reached his hairline, and he was nodding in the way that preceded a blow-up. “Discorporated,” he repeated.

“But—but it was over thirty-eight hundred years old,” Ariadne stammered on, gaze darting between mutton-chops and the soldiers behind him, “so I was probably due for an upgrade—”

Mutton-chops’ eyes narrowed, and he stepped around the desk.

Ariadne took a step back, gaze going to the bundle in her hands— _why_ had she been given a uniform with no weapon?—and then the soldiers, but they were all staring impassively ahead—

Wait—no one could be _that_ impassive unless they were desperately trying to hide something they were anything _but_ impassive about—

“I count them all out,” mutton-chops said, and Ariadne gave him half her attention while she kept the rest of it on the not-impassively-impassive soldiers, “and I count them all in again, and then _you_ turn up, _late_ for Armageddon, not even a BODY! You _pathetic_ excuse for an angel – just like your father!”

Ariadne’s gaze whipped back to mutton-chops. “What,” she demanded, “did you just call my dad?”

Mutton-chops simply glared at her, as if to say, _You heard me._

“The one— _one_ —angel who looks at the idea of killing _seven billion people_ and thinks, ‘Gee, maybe that’s not such a good idea, perhaps we should do something else?’ and you—you call him _pathetic_?”

One of the soldiers flinched.

It almost knocked Ariadne out of her rant. Almost. “Well, you know what?” she said. “My dad had better things to do than participate in this _pathetic_ pissing match—and so do I!”

She slammed the uniform onto the desk, and every single soldier stared at her.

“Don’t be a coward!” mutton-chops shouted in her ear, but she ignored him.

She was watching the soldiers.

Ariadne knew a thing or two about soldiers; she and Dionysus had spent more than a few nights in army camps. Most would think army camps were hardly their scene, but they would be wrong. Because while Ares loved to be in the thick of things, reveling in the slaughter, and Athena haunted the officers’ tents and grassy hilltops, directing the course of battle, neither of them had much use for the soldiers’ campfires. Neither was there the night before the battle, when the young men (not all men, no, but all so, so young) passed a bottle or a wineskin back and forth and boasted of the great things they’d do the next day, if only to keep at bay the fear of the not-great-things that might be done to them. And neither was there to pick up the pieces the night after the battle, when the copper scent of blood hung thick in the air and there were fewer faces around each campfire, and the faces that were there suddenly weren’t so young anymore.

And these soldiers in their kilts and their cream jackets weren’t so different from the ones who huddled around those campfires. Some believed they were fighting for a noble cause. Some believed they were bound for glory and would be crowned a hero by this time tomorrow. And some …

Some didn’t want to be there at all.

Mutton-chops had paused for breath; Ariadne took advantage of the pause to say, “Shut up. I already told you, I have better things to do than …” She waved vaguely. “This.”

Mutton-chops started. “And—and what would that be?” he stammered.

“Getting back to …” Ariadne glanced around, wondering if she could find an exit (and how fast she’d have to run to get there).

She saw the free-floating globe again.

“Earth …” she said wonderingly, walking closer.

“ _Earth_?” mutton-chops demanded. “Without a body? That’s ridiculous.”

“Why?” Ariadne asked. “There are only seven-something-billion of them walking around – I could probably borrow one if it came down to it …”

“What, possess one? You can’t do that!” mutton-chops scoffed, turning back to his clipboard.

_Possess?_

Ariadne started and turned around. “You mean like demons can?”

“You’re not a demon,” mutton-chops said, scribbling, “you’re a—”

“Half-demon?” Ariadne tossed at him, and somehow mutton-chops didn’t flinch. The soldiers didn’t react, either. “Has it not occurred to you,” she asked, “that if angels and demons were _that_ different, I couldn’t exist?”

“What are you on—” Mutton-chops looked up. “Wait! Where are you going?”

“Home,” Ariadne said, turning back to the spinning globe. “And the rest of you are welcome to join me, by the way! If you have better things to do than be cannon fodder.”

“What—get away from that thing!”

“Nope!” Ariadne said cheerfully. And then she reached for the globe, her finger just brushing a small, rainy island in the North Atlantic that was currently the terrestrial headquarters of about sixty million people, an inordinate number of sheep, one angel, one demon, and just about everyone else that Ariadne loved.[3]

And as she was sucked into the globe, she could only think one thing:

_I really, really hope this works._

* * *

[1] So technically four things.

[2] Not to mention the cars.

[3] Except, of course, Asterion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Tags to Mind**
> 
> **Fantasy Violence:** When Ligur comes into the room, he finds Ariadne right inside the doorway, holding a green squirt gun and pointing it at his head. Ariadne fires the squirt gun (filled with Holy Water), and Ligur exits the universe the same way he did in the show. Hastur has his freak-out (like he did in the show), and Ariadne tries to shoot him, but he fires flame at her. Ariadne drops the squirt gun and it goes under the desk. Undeterred, she grabs the bucket (filled with regular water) and dumps it over Hastur's head, including slamming the bucket on his head. Then she shoves him into the safe (which she made bigger just before Ligur and Hastur came into the room).
> 
> If this sounds like something you don't want to read, skip starting at "And they blinked madly when they found Ariadne." and start up again at "Ariadne slammed the door shut."
> 
> Really only one tag to mind here, wahoo!
> 
> And now that that's out of the way, please feel free to leave a comment or look me up on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/)! Thanks for reading!


	28. The Harrowing of Heaven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have ourselves another (wait for it) **mind the tags** chapter! See the end notes to learn which tags to mind.

“Kid. Kid. What are you _doing_? Just light ‘em up and go!” Hermes shouted at the bank of television screens.

“But he can’t,” Athena said. “Either Crowley or Mephistopheles has to light the Hellfire, and—”

“ _I know_! Hades, Persephone – what can we do?”

There was a rattle of dice and an exchange of glances. “I don’t think,” Persephone said slowly, “there’s anything we _can_ do right now—”

“Bullshit! There has to be something—Pater, Athena, give me a hand here—”

The argument, as arguments in this family tended to do, quickly devolved.

But the argument did not engulf the entire table. Two goddesses held themselves apart from it.

One was watching the screen, nervously picking at a loose thread on her skirt. The other watched the first goddess.

Eris was the first to speak. “Mother? I’m going to regret this, but—are you all right?”

“I should have realized,” Hera murmured.

Eris looked between the screens and the angels (and demons, and one wine god) on it and the goddess before her. “Realized what?”

“Trauma. And quite a bit of it. Not the worst case I’ve ever seen, but all the same …” Hera leaned back, hand over her mouth.

Eris’s eyebrow arched. “Before this crazy train rolled out of the station, hadn’t you only talked to Aziraphale for like, five minutes?”

Hera shook her head in a way that wasn’t quite a denial. “In my clinical experience—”

“Oh, for Gaia’s sake.”

“Hush. As I was saying, in my experience, there are generally only so many ways people who have been this traumatized respond to their abuser coming roaring back into their lives—”

The scene on the screens changed, and Hera’s expression cleared. “Oh. Oh, good.” She smiled, then slowly leaned back and reached for the wineglass that had appeared on the table at some point during the evening.

Eris glanced between the screens and Hera.

“What?”

Hera lightly nudged Eris and nodded at the screen, a _watch this_ gesture if there ever was one. “He’s choosing the other one.”

* * *

The trouble with Heaven, Aziraphale had known for a long time, was that one was never quite sure where the line was. Or rather, that the line kept shifting. Deeds that were perfectly acceptable one day were taboo the next; actions that one was quite sure were the best one could have possibly managed at the time were never quite good enough; and really the only thing Aziraphale had ever been right about in literal millennia was that he was always, somehow, wrong.

This, though?

Striding up to Gabriel, wings flaring past his cloak, shouting, “ _You_!” and putting enough force into it to actually make the archangel’s eyes widen?

This was not so much “over the line” as “in the next postcode over from the line and rapidly gaining distance.”

And Aziraphale didn’t care.

“You—you—lily-livered—purblind—rumbumptious—loathly— _wanker_!” Each word was punctuated by a step forward, followed by Gabriel taking a step back.

“What?” Gabriel sputtered, gaze slipping to his fellow archangels as if to ask for a translation.

“He called you a cowardly, short-sighted, pompous, repulsive person who masturbates too much,” Crowley filled in from just behind Aziraphale’s left shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, Aziraphale could see the Wabbajack. “Which you are. Hi, Gabe. Long time no see.”

“Not nearly long enough, serpent,” Gabriel spat like it was an insult.

“Oh, the feeling is _incredibly_ mutual.”

The boiling in Aziraphale’s chest, the trembling of his hands, the heart palpitations – they were all, Aziraphale was realizing rather belatedly, signs of anger. Possibly even Wrath, though Aziraphale would not lay odds on it being divine in origin. Still, divine or not, the all-consuming Wrath was making it difficult to speak, think, or even see beyond the desire to add a bit of extra color to the too-perfect face of Gabriel’s corporation.

It was also making it very difficult to _care_ – so Aziraphale didn’t.

The resulting collision of fist and flesh left Aziraphale’s hand stinging—but it also sent Gabriel sprawling.

“ _Why_?” Aziraphale heard himself asking – demanding, really – in a voice that wasn’t like his voice at all, certainly not his Heaven voice. This voice was raw and rough, and it seemed to realize that it would only have one chance to come out, so it had shoved six thousand years of _whys_ – the whys he had wanted to ask after falls and floods and near child-sacrifices and _actual_ child-sacrifices and plagues and sackings of cities and rains of fire and brimstone and crucifixions and pestilences and genocides and every other atrocity that Heaven had caused or ignored or condoned and forced Aziraphale to bear witness to. It was a voice that came out after taking six thousand years of cowardice and mental gymnastics, subjecting it to the pressure of a demon who kept asking questions and an Armageddon that kept coming closer until it turned into a sharp diamond of courage, and then after all that, thinking it was finally safe and finding out that no, no, it wasn’t safe and never would be safe.

And it was a voice that had stumbled upon the lifeless corporation of his child and thought it was a _corpse_ – and but for the grace of another disgruntled angel and demon, _it would have been a corpse_ – and then found itself staring at a stack of photos of that child on its supervisor’s desk, realizing anew the depths to which Heaven would sink.

It was a voice that wanted answers. About a lot of things. But time being short, it would focus on getting answers to the most recent series of questions and insults.

“She hadn’t done anything to you!” Aziraphale roared. “She had no part in any of this! We— _I_ —hid her away to keep her safe, to keep her _away from you_ , and the _second_ you find out about her—” Aziraphale broke off, one hand over his mouth, because another emotion was threatening to come out instead of the Wrath (or maybe with the Wrath) and he didn’t have time for that. “You start spying on her and planning to murder her!”

Gabriel blinked a few times, even as he still had one hand over his corporation’s bloodied nose, and his gaze slipped sideways, toward the other archangels, for a fraction of a second. “Aziraphale—old friend!—you sure that, uh, that little walk in Hellfire you took a couple weeks back didn’t fry your brains? Because—”

There was a hiss that came over Aziraphale’s left shoulder, and suddenly Aziraphale was jolted out of his Wrath, because a Crowley who was hissing like _that_ was doubtless _very_ angry and liable to do something _very_ foolish—

He didn’t get a chance. There was the distinctive _shing_ of a firmament blade being pulled from the ether, and a stern, businesslike voice saying in a tone that made the soldier in Aziraphale want to snap to attention and salute, “ _Enough_.”

Michael had materialized next to Gabriel, on the far side of a long, flaming blade whose tip rested right over Aziraphale’s heart.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley shouted, and somehow Aziraphale reached behind and held him back, because whatever that blade did to him, it would surely do _worse_ to Crowley—

And then—with a _shing_ of manifestation and a _clang_ of metal-on-metal and a _crack_ of something like thunder—that blade was no longer over Aziraphale’s heart. And between him and it was another blade – this one with lightning dancing up it even as the other had flames – a goatskin shield, and not incidentally, a Samael. And to her right, a Dionysus.

“No,” Samael said, as if that would be enough to forestall any further argument. And Dionysus just grinned.

Michael’s nostrils flared. In the space between one blink and the next, her wings sprung out, her business suit morphed into battle armor, and a shield appeared on her left arm. “Samael. Is this the path you want to take? You _know_ what happens to traitors to Heaven.”

“I do know that, seeing as I’ve just come up from Hell. With the wine god,” Samael added, for some reason, to Sandalphon.

“Who you definitely should have seen coming,” Dionysus added, and Sandalphon choked.

“ _What_ is—” Uriel started, but if she finished, Aziraphale never heard, because there was a sudden swish of air and a panicked “ _Angel_!” and a push out of the way and—

And the underside of Gabriel’s quarterstaff, pulled from the ether just as Michael’s sword had been, catching Crowley on the upswing and bearing him up, up, toward the impossibly high ceiling, and then—

Crowley fell.

“ _No_!” Aziraphale heard himself shout, and—he couldn’t imagine that he’d consciously willed it, but he must have done something because suddenly there was a mattress under Crowley—he landed on it, hard, bounced twice, rolled to the side and then—didn’t move—

Aziraphale’s heart plummeted, and he felt his _other_ wings come out, or rather the stumps of the wings he’d lost for his failure in the Garden—he started to run toward Crowley—

And was pushed out of the way by— _Mephistopheles_? “I’ve got him, you just— _shit_!” He danced out of the way of the wildly swinging staff.

Gabriel. Again.

_No._

With a sound that could have been the bellow of a bull, the roar of a lion, or the scream of an eagle – all the aspects of himself he’d tried to lock away after being demoted from a cherub to a principality – Aziraphale launched himself at his former supervisor.

Chaos erupted all around him – Aziraphale could see flashes of lightning and hear rumbles of thunder and the cracks of Dionysus’s whip-like vines – but Aziraphale cared for none of it. His entire being was focused on Gabriel, on that quarterstaff he kept swinging, and the fact that he had tried to kill Ariadne and now he’d hurt Crowley and he could not be allowed to hurt Aziraphale’s family _ever again_.

Gabriel spun the staff, too fast for human eyes to track, brought it up and then down again, no doubt to crash on Aziraphale’s head—

Instead Aziraphale’s arm made contact, and did it with enough force to shove and send Gabriel stumbling back.

Because this was the thing about Aziraphale’s corporation. Yes, it was soft. _He_ was soft. But it was soft and he was soft because he had _made_ himself soft, and underneath that softness were solidity and strength. Because, at the end of the day, having a soft heart in a cruel world was courage, not weakness _._

And that was something Gabriel would never understand.

So Gabriel could continue to rain down blows if he wanted – even with a firmament weapon whose strength Aziraphale could feel to the depths of his true self, far beyond this corporation – and Aziraphale would keep coming after him, dodging what blows he could and choosing where the blows he couldn’t dodge would land, and eventually Gabriel would get tired and he’d make a mistake and—

Aziraphale realized a split second too late that the flick of Gabriel’s wrist meant _very bad things_ and couldn’t even brace himself for impact before the quarterstaff came crashing into his right hip, side, and thigh—right on the old scar whose aftereffects had gotten him transferred from active service to apple-tree duty—

Aziraphale’s entire being exploded in pain. He howled and stumbled back, stars dancing in front of his eyes, clutching at his side, fingers molding around the lump that was the can of worms still in his pocket—

Wait—the can of worms—

Aziraphale let himself fall to his knees, gathering jacket and cloak more closely, still clutching at his side with one hand—and with the other, sneaking into his pocket—

_What have I got in my pocket?_ Aziraphale thought in the mental voice he’d always assigned to Bilbo, and very nearly laughed out loud.

But didn’t. Because if he knew his former supervisor, Gabriel would right now be coming closer—

_Shing!_

And there he was.

Aziraphale could see the reflection of the flaming sword – Gabriel might prefer the quarterstaff, but he was bright enough to know that some work went much faster with a blade – in the tile before him. He didn’t look up, not yet.

“Pathetic,” Gabriel said, voice dripping with disdain. “See, Aziraphale? _This_ is what all that gross matter does to a celestial body. _You_ are on the ground, spent, whereas I …”

The reflection of the flames bounced as Gabriel tossed his flaming sword from one hand to the other. “Am as fit for duty as I ever was.”

The blade came to rest just under Aziraphale’s chin. “Now,” Gabriel said, “you _will_ shut your stupid mouth and die already.”

And Aziraphale—

He had one hand already locked around the can – and he sensed that was all he’d need.

So he smiled and tossed out a phrase some of the lovely young people who came to his shop to look at his collection of queer literature were so very fond of, and that Aziraphale had never had a chance to use.

“Not today, Satan.”

And his hand whipped up and the can came out and Aziraphale squeezed and—

Worms exploded from the can—but not _just_ worms, glowing worm-like trails of energy that Aziraphale did not understand and was not sure he liked—

The energy slammed into Gabriel’s chest and sent him flying backward—and when the energy hit him, suddenly it _became_ worms in all of their slimy, wriggly, creepy glory—

“AAAAAAAH!!!!” Gabriel screamed and dropped the sword—Aziraphale grabbed it; no, it wasn’t _his_ sword, but his sword had only ever been standard issue anyway, so it didn’t really matter—

“ _Angel_!” came a sudden half-sobbing voice and a sudden weight crashing against his good side. “You _bloody idiot_! Never do that again!”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale gasped, and he wanted to put his arm around Crowley and hold him tight, because somehow he was all right—

But there was another presence at his other side—Mephistopheles—trying to pull him to his feet (and failing). “Come on! We’ve got to go _now_!”

“Wait—go? Why—”

“Because we just lit the cocktails,” Crowley said, grabbing Aziraphale’s other arm and hauling him up, “now _come on_!”

“But—but what about—” Aziraphale looked over his shoulder—

And there were Samael and Dionysus, running toward them, the latter holding a flaming sword, and behind them were—

Aziraphale blinked.

Uriel lay on the ground, not far from Crowley’s mattress, barely moving, zaps of lightning still dancing up and down her corporation.

Sandalphon was stretched out like a starfish, also unmoving, staring at the ceiling and whimpering.

And Michael—

Michael was _on_ the ceiling, or rather tied up in vines hanging from the ceiling, struggling mightily and howling out a stream of quite un-angelic invective.

Yet as Aziraphale watched, one of Sandalphon’s hands came up to his head; he groaned and started to sit up—

_That_ got Aziraphale moving.

“To the lift!” Mephistopheles shouted, taking the lead and running toward it.

“We can’t take the lift!” Samael called after him. “We’re about to set this place on fire; you can’t use the lift when there’s a—”

_BOOM!_ The first cocktail went off; Aziraphale could feel the heat on his back, the Hellfire bold and angry and reaching, reaching, reaching—

Mephistopheles tossed a grin over his shoulder; in the orange light of the Hellfire his face looked more fiendish than ever – and also boyish, and maybe even joyful. “ _Exactly_!”

_BOOM!_

They kept running.

_BOOM!_

Dionysus reached the lift first; he slammed the down button, and the doors slid open with a faint, pleasant chime that was entirely drowned out by a fourth _BOOM!_

The five of them piled in, and just as the doors closed, Aziraphale saw that Michael had gotten herself down from the ceiling and with Sandalphon was dragging Uriel away—

_BOOM!_

The door closed.

Aziraphale slumped against the wall as a number of corporeal and ethereal injuries he had decided weren’t going to bother him while he was fighting Gabriel overrode that decision and began to bother him intensely—starting with the one right over his old scar.

“Angel!” Crowley shouted, trying to hold him up.

“Oh—oh, don’t mind me, dear boy, I just—I just need to catch my breath—”

“Like Heaven you do! Samael, can you help?”

“No, no, that’s quite all right!” Aziraphale sputtered, because he’d heard a thing or two about Samael during the first war, and one was that if she came up to an injured angel and offered battlefield medicine, that angel was generally better off asking for battlefield _mercy_.

“Perhaps I can be of assistance?”

Aziraphale should have perhaps expected that voice and the glowing, translucent form of Hera that came with it. Nevertheless, he had not expected it, jumped, and instantly regretted doing so.

Hera tutted and moved closer to Aziraphale. “Oh, you poor thing. That beast showed no mercy whatsoever, didn’t he?”

“Hera,” and that was Dionysus, and the tone was just this side of _warning_ , “the last—ok, the _first_ time one of them got injured, Ari had to fix it; I don’t think—”

“Oh, hush,” Hera waved a dismissive hand at Dionysus, “I’m the queen of the gods; if I can’t fix a few bruises caused by a bullying archangel with a stick, I might as well hand in my crown tomorrow.” And brooking no further argument, Hera made a complicated gesture with both hands, and—

Aziraphale felt better. Much better, in fact. Even his old injury had ceased to bother him, though it hadn’t exactly been bothering him before Gabriel hit it with a quarterstaff; still, usually it took several days for it to go back to normal after a shock like that.

Aziraphale let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Oh—oh, thank you.”

“It was nothing, but you’re welcome all the same.” Hera smiled, serene, regal, and a touch – just a touch – smug.

Then she drew herself up, and Aziraphale suddenly understood why, out of all the goddesses Zeus had courted, bedded, and according to some sources, wedded, _this_ was the one who had become his queen.

“Aziraphale, Principality, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, husband – or close enough,” Hera’s gaze darted to Crowley, a slight smirk crossing her face as he choked, “and father. You have spent millennia protecting your family by denying and hiding them, and while I will not say you were wrong at the time, still, it was a strategy that could not work forever. And when it ceased to work …”

Now Hera smiled. Actually _smiled_. “Well. You became a protector, a Guardian in truth, defending your family – and not incidentally, yourself – against one of the biggest threats to its safety. And you did not scruple to stoop to a dirty trick or two to do it. Well _done_ , Aziraphale.”

“Er, thank—”

“And for your reward,” Hera went on, “you shall have a symbol of guardianship, of family and all that it implies.”

Hera held out her hand. In it was an apple.

Aziraphale hesitated for a split second – because, well, it was an _apple_ – but he reached out and took it. When his fingers brushed the apple, it became solid, and when he took it from Hera’s grasp, it turned golden, blessed with a subtle fragrance that Aziraphale would have called heavenly, except Heaven didn’t smell like that at all.

“An apple of the Hesperides,” Hera said. “The tree from which this grew was given to me as a wedding present by Gaia. It is the symbol of my union with Zeus and the favorite fruit of all our children as they grew. Use it well.”

Aziraphale stared hard at the apple and had to swallow hard around the lump in his throat. “I— _thank_ you—”

“It is nothing more than what you have earned. Oh, and Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale looked up to see her holding out a business card. He took it.

Before he had a chance to read it, Hera said, “That is the card of a colleague of mine who specializes in, shall we say, supernatural instances of complex trauma and PTSD. This is not part of your reward, but I would be remiss if I didn’t give it to you. Once things calm down enough that you have an hour a week to devote to your mental health, I _highly_ recommend that you make a standing appointment.”

And with that, she disappeared.

“Er—what?” Aziraphale stammered.

Dionysus sighed. “She’s saying – nicely – that you need therapy and lots of it. Can I see that?”

Aziraphale handed the card over. Dionysus palmed the card and flicked his wrist, and suddenly there were five cards. He handed four out to the rest of them and tucked the fifth into his breast pocket.

“Why,” Samael asked flatly, turning the card over and frowning, “are you giving these to us?”

“Because self-medication will only get you so far, and after this?” Dionysus sighed and leaned his head against the wall of the lift. “We’re _all_ going to need fucking therapy.”

* * *

When the lift doors chimed open, they did so on a scene that was the Heavenly equivalent of pandemonium.

Angels hurried in every possible direction while a siren wailed, hitting a note that somehow managed to be melodic, not at all like Hell’s nails-on-a-chalkboard alarm system. But despite everyone hurrying about, there were no collisions or near-misses. Some angels’ faces were pinched with worry, but there was no shouting, little other sign of emotion. No one even _ran_ – every angel’s every step was measured out, precise, not a toe out of line, like a dance.

A human might have called it creepy as hell. Crowley would have retorted that Hell had nothing on this for creepiness.

As they five of them ducked out of the lift, Samael leading the way to (hopefully) the Reliquary, a calm, brisk, businesslike voice came over the intercom:

“Hellfire-trained units, report to the Ninth Sphere. All active-duty platoons, assemble at the parade grounds. All civilian and administrative personnel, refer to Evacuation Plan Omega.”

Samael winced, while Aziraphale and Dionysus said, in unison – albeit in quite different tones – “ _Omega_?”

“What’s Evacuation Plan Omega?” Crowley asked Aziraphale.

Aziraphale glanced side to side, but it didn’t really matter – or so Crowley thought – because no one was paying attention to them at all. “Omega is the last plan. It means – it means it’s _over_. Civilian personnel are evacuating to Earth.”

“ _Earth_?” Crowley hissed, because that was the _last_ thing they needed – they hadn’t gone through all that trouble to save the Earth just to have it invaded by a bunch of bloody angels _now_ —

He might have had more to say, but a squadron of angels in firefighters’ kit – except, Somebody help him, was that _tartan_? – rushed past, and the clattering of the gear was too loud for any conversation that wasn’t held at a shout.

And as soon as they were past the Heavenly fire brigade, they were in sight of the Reliquary.

Crowley swore.

The good news – and there was good news, because even now some of Crowley’s essential optimism hadn’t quite left him – was that there wasn’t a whole platoon between them and the Reliquary.

The bad news was that there was now half a platoon between them and the Reliquary. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the platoon was led by one of the most nervous-looking angels Crowley had ever seen (and he’d spent six thousand years palling around with Aziraphale). And in Crowley’s vast experience, the only thing worse than a calm, cool, and collected military leader was a nervous one.

Samael stopped short, and so did the rest of them, ducking behind one of the round pillars before (hopefully) the platoon or the leader could notice the five angels who seemed to have forgotten their steps in the Evacuation Omega dance. “Fuck!” Samael said as soon as they were (more or less) out of sight.

“Right. I don’t suppose we happen to have a wheelbarrow or a holocaust cloak on hand?” Dionysus muttered, glancing around the pillar.

“What on earth—” Samael started.

“ _Don’t_ ask, you do _not_ want to know, certainly not now, because if you do ask, _certain people_ ,” Aziraphale glared at Crowley, “will _not_ rest until they’ve quoted the entire film. And we don’t have time for that!”

Crowley sighed, and then, because he couldn’t resist, said, “As you wish, angel.”

As he’d hoped, Aziraphale’s cheeks went a bit pink at that, but alas, the pink was gone far too soon. Although maybe not, since they did have more important things to be getting on with.

Mephistopheles dared a glance around the pillar; he blinked rapidly and turned to Samael. “Samael—what’s supposed to happen to the Reliquary with Evacuation Plan Omega?”

“It’s not part of the plan; I’m—” Samael stopped, comprehension dawning across her face.

“What?” Dionysus asked, saving Crowley the trouble.

And Aziraphale answered, saving Samael the trouble. “Michael’s orders … they’d no longer apply.”

“Then whose orders do?” Crowley asked.

Samael looked about a split-second away from hysterical laughter, but Mephistopheles saved her by grabbing her shoulders. “It’s you, isn’t it, Samael? It’s your department! It’s your orders!”

Samael shoved her hand against her mouth, leaning hard against the pillar, and nodded.

“Right. Dionysus—can you make me look like an angel?” Mephistopheles asked.

Samael’s head whipped up. “ _What_?”

“It’s the only way – I have the knapsack!” Mephistopheles said. “You go and tell the platoon that orders have changed, and we need to evacuate the artifacts. Then we all head in there, and you and I can grab the crown and put it in the knapsack and _go_!”

“But the rest of the platoon …” Samael started.

“We can set off another cocktail,” Dionysus said. “When it goes boom, you tell the platoon to abort mission, and we all run out of here.”

“So you _can_ make me look like an angel?” Mephistopheles asked.

Dionysus tilted his head to the side and made an indeterminate noise in the back of his throat. “Depends. How attached are you to that goatee?”

“I can grow it back later.”

“Hmm …” Dionysus looked Mephistopheles up and down a few more times. Then he murmured something in Greek, made that zipping-up motion again, and—

_Somebody_. Mephistopheles, goatee-less, decked head to toe in light-colored business wear, standing up straight with his hair carefully parted to the side, really did look like an angel.

“Hold this,” Mephistopheles said, doffing his cloak and handing it to Dionysus. Then, to Samael, “Ready?”

Samael nodded, swallowed hard, and slid out from behind the pillar. Mephistopheles clapped a hand to her shoulder for a fraction of a second and followed.

One look at the way Samael was walking and Crowley could tell this wouldn’t work in a million years. He brandished the Wabbajack, ready to start waving it and work their way in by brute force—

Dionysus waved his hand, and Samael’s shoulders suddenly relaxed, and her walk was more like the other angels putting Evacuation Plan Omega into action – hurrying but not rushing, sharp precise steps but no running, back straight and gaze forward. Mephistopheles didn’t change much, but he hadn’t needed to.

“What did you …” Aziraphale began to ask, glancing up at Dionysus.

Dionysus smirked. “It’s all acting, isn’t it?”

“Morisehale!” Samael called, and the platoon leader snapped to attention.

“Archangel Samael, ma’am! I—I heard the orders, but, but given Michael’s direct orders to me, I thought—”

“You did the right thing,” Samael said, and Crowley wondered if she was being too reassuring or if this Morisehale would take it for impatience. “We need to clear out the Reliquary, and my assistant and I can’t do it alone. What’s your platoon’s Omega rendezvous point?”

“Mount Sinai, ma’am.”

Samael pretended to think a moment – or at least Crowley thought she was pretending, _hoped_ she was pretending – before nodding. “It’ll do. Come on, let’s get going.”

Samael stepped forward – the platoon parted before her like the Red Sea before the human who’d made Mount Sinai so famous – and for a moment Crowley thought this might actually work, it might actually be this easy—

“HALT! TRAITOR!”

_Fuck._

Sandalphon and Gabriel were storming toward Samael and Mephistopheles. Sandalphon was limping, and Gabriel was still covered in worms. Thank Somebody they were alone – it was about the only thing to be thankful for.

“Platoon leader! Seize that angel! She’s a traitor to Heaven, and so is her—” Gabriel squinted at Mephistopheles. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Ah! Mephistopheles!” Sandalphon yelped.

“Seize that demon!” Gabriel shouted, pointing at Mephistopheles.

For a second Crowley allowed himself to hope that maybe – maybe – with Dionysus’s power buoying her, Samael might yet bluff her way out of this. Because they were sorely outnumbered and the other side had _two_ archangels—

No such luck. Samael snapped her thunder-spear out and the shield. “Gabriel—Sandalphon—don’t make me use this.”

“Or m-make me use these,” Mephistopheles stammered, holding out two flaming thumbs.

_Blessed Heaven,_ Crowley thought, hefting the Wabbajack, even as Aziraphale pulled his new sword out of the ether, and Dionysus—

Dionysus had disappeared—

No, wait, there was a small dark shape skittering across the blazing white floor—

“What’s he—” Aziraphale started.

“Give it up, Samael,” Gabriel said. “You’re surrounded. If you surrender now, we might just let you Fall for this.”

Samael hefted the spear and growled—

Wait—that wasn’t _her_ growling—

“ROAR!”

The small dark shape skittering across the floor changed into a large golden cat—a wild-maned lion leapt into the air—Gabriel’s quarterstaff whipped out again—

The lion caught it in its jaws and ripped it from Gabriel’s hands, then pushed off Gabriel’s chest to gain more altitude and overleap him. Sandalphon tried to duck and got four sets of claws raking across his skull for his trouble.

The lion spun in midair and became Dionysus, landing in a crouch with the quarterstaff in one hand and Michael’s flaming sword in the other.

“They’re not surrounded,” he said.

Around him, the floor bubbled and erupted in vines.

“ _You are_.”

* * *

“WHOA!” Eris shouted, slamming her drink down with enough force that Hera got splashed. “Holy shit! The thigh-baby’s got _balls_!”

Zeus rested his head in his hands and groaned.

“But where are the other archangels?” Athena asked. “Eris, can you—”

“Nope! Nope, we are focusing on this. This is gonna be _epic_ ; Ares is gonna shit himself when he sees this—”

“I thought you liked Ares,” Hades muttered.

“Why do you think I’m going to show this to him? WOW! Go, thigh-baby!”

“Eris, would you please—” Hera blinked and stared at the screens. “Oh, that is rather impressive.”

“See? See? Even _Mother_ admits it!”

“Eris,” Persephone said, “you do realize that not everyone writes Dionysus off as being completely useless, don’t you?”

And so the discussion/debate/argument went on, each god and goddess insisting on saying their piece, regardless of which of the others was actually listening at any given moment.

Except one.

Hermes leaned forward, fingers steepled around his nose, hands covering his mouth.

His eyes were glued on the screen that showed Dionysus, sword-fighting with Sandalphon with a technique that owed more to Russell Crowe in _Gladiator_ than any actual gladiators, or legionaries, or anyone else who had ever handled a gladius that may or may not have been on fire at the time.

And he didn’t say a word.

* * *

All in all, Crowley thought, this whole fight could have been going a lot worse. For starters, none of them had died yet. And between Samael’s thunder-spear, Mephistopheles’s Hellfire, and the Wabbajack, they were facing fewer angels than they had started with. There had been a slight moment of panic when the Wabbajack turned one of the angels into a chicken, but Mephistopheles had punted the chicken into a cluster of other angels and the ensuing explosion had taken them all out (to say nothing of the window behind them).

Really, if Dionysus and Aziraphale would be sensible and try distance weapons instead of insisting on fighting at close range, Crowley might even venture to think that things were going _well_.

But they wouldn’t, because clearly only one member of their group could be sensible at a time, and usually that member was Mephistopheles.

And Dionysus—oh, there he went again, that twist that looked fantastic, it really did, if Crowley had seen it on stage he would have applauded, but _this wasn’t a fucking stage_ and Sandalphon actually knew what he was doing—

Sandalphon stabbed, and by some miracle[1] it only caught Dionysus’s jacket and not, say, the fleshy bits the jacket covered. Of course Sandalphon’s sword was _on fire_ so that was really not as miraculous as it first appeared—

Dionysus hissed and the jacket disappeared. He dodged a very well-aimed blow and launched himself into a frenzy of slashing attacks that were, again, very ill-timed and quite unfit for the purpose of actually winning a fight but had the advantage of being too fast for Sandalphon to keep up with.

And now there was a group of three angels trying to launch themselves at Aziraphale’s back, because of _course_ Aziraphale had his back to Crowley instead of giving him a clear shot at Gabriel, who he was sword-fighting[2] with—

“OI!” Crowley shouted, waving the Wabbajack. One of the angels turned into a pile of gouda, or perhaps it was cheddar. “Pick on somebody your own bloody size, you prats!”

… On second thought, that had not been one of Crowley’s smarter moves, had it?

“Shit shit shit shit shit shit _shit_!” Crowley muttered, dancing backwards as the remaining angels launched themselves at _him_ ; he waved the Wabbajack and one of them stopped moving and fell to the ground, which only left one—unfortunately that was the biggest one, the fastest one with the polearm that was easily longer than Crowley was tall—

That one fell, howling, as lightning danced all over her corporation. “Thanks, Sam—d’you mind if I call you Sam?” Crowley called.

“YES!”

“Noted!”

He almost laughed; he really did. Because that was just out of a film, maybe even a Bond one, wasn’t it? The overwhelming odds, the banter, the fact that they weren’t dead yet despite said odds—they even had cool gadgets, although Eris’s head would probably explode if someone tried to compare her to Q—

Crowley just barely managed to dodge another angel with another polearm, turning them into a rabbit with a wave of the Wabbajack.

On second thought, if this was Crowley’s James Bond film, he _really_ wanted a word with whoever’d written the script.

“ _Aaaah_!”

That—that sounded like Dionysus—

Crowley’s gaze whipped around and—

_Oh, FUCK!_

Dionysus lay sprawled on his back—one of his pant legs was on fire, and the actual leg underneath it probably would have been bleeding if flaming swords didn’t immediately cauterize whatever fleshy bits they cut into—and his sword was _gone_ —

And Crowley—“SAMAEL!” he shouted, because Samael’s weapon at least wouldn’t hurt Dionysus, whereas if the Wabbajack decided to be contrary, then Dionysus would easily end up caught up in the ice rune or the fireball or the explosion—

“LITTLE BUSY!” Samael shouted back, and, well, _fuck_.

Meanwhile Sandalphon stood over Dionysus, sword raised high, manic look in his eyes. “Not—so—tough—now—wine—god—eh?” he panted.

Dionysus snarled and kicked up with his good leg, hitting Sandalphon right in the fork.

Sandalphon barely flinched. “Funny,” he panted, and oh—Crowley did not like the look in his eye, that was the look of an angel who had smitten many a city in his endless years and enjoyed every second of it. “If I—remember correctly—your little spawn-friend—tried the same thing—right before she died—”

There was a sudden _whoosh_ , a sudden silence, a popping of the ears, like all pressure had left the room—and it wasn’t because of the exploded window—

Dionysus had stopped moving.

Time seemed to stand still.

And then Dionysus _roared_ – and in that second he wasn’t Dionysus anymore, but a leopard launching himself up from his back, burned hind leg be damned, and Sandalphon—

Sandalphon barely had time to scream before—

“ _CROWLEY_!”

Crowley went down, tackled by a very determined and very scared angel, Wabbajack flying out of his hand—

A blast of Heavenly light went flying right through where Crowley had been standing, except—

Aziraphale ground his teeth and bowed his head and covered his upper arm with one hand, where there was a stain spreading on his jacket.

“Angel?” Crowley whispered, sitting up. “Here, let me see—”

Aziraphale shook his head and tried to push Crowley away with his bad arm, the trailing side of his jacket, weighed down by Hera’s apple, falling half in Crowley’s lap, but it was no use. Crowley could just sense the edges of the wound, and in that wound was a lot of Heavenly Righteousness, true, but it was twisted, warped, just one slight turn off from Pride or Avarice or—

“Huh,” Gabriel said. He stood behind Aziraphale, hefting the sword. “So it seems that the little Principality has started to Fall anyway. I almost wonder what would happen if we put _him_ in Holy Water.”

And Crowley.

Well.

In his defense, he would point out that what Gabriel was saying made him more than a little bit angry. And when he was angry, he didn’t do his best thinking. And what Gabriel was doing with that sword made him more than a bit panicky – and when he was panicky, he _really_ didn’t do his best thinking.

So he grabbed the closest possible weapon and wielded it against Gabriel.

Unfortunately it wasn’t the Wabbajack.

Wasn’t the flaming sword, either.

Or even the Can o’ Worms.

No, it had to be the bloody apple.

He whipped the apple right at Gabriel’s face.

It hit him in the forehead and bounced off.

Gabriel blinked. And flinched. And that was it.

_Fuck,_ Crowley thought, grabbing Aziraphale’s good arm and casting about for another weapon, _any_ weapon, or anything he could use that wasn’t Hellfire with the angel in between him and that utter prick—

A high-pitched scream suddenly rang through the room, ending in a choking gurgle, followed by a roar.

Crowley turned to look, because of course he did, and so did Gabriel—who went white and gasped, “ _Sandalphon_!”

But Crowley wasn’t looking at Gabriel. Or Sandalphon.[3]

He was staring at the apple.

It had rolled to a stop a few feet away from Crowley. Close enough to dart out and grab if he really wanted to. But he didn’t want to, because the apple was wobbling back and forth, back and forth on the smooth white tile.

And a bark-covered root had erupted out of one side, followed by another root, and another, and then—

The apple exploded, a tree trunk bursting forth, followed by branches and leaves and Somebody help Crowley, _apples_ , so many golden apples that the boughs drooped with them, bending to brush the tile floor.

The apples began to fall. As each one hit the ground, it burst into roots and trunk and branches and apples, more apples, apples and apples and apples and then more trees and more apples and more trees and—

“ _Shit_ ,” Crowley said, and he tried to grab Aziraphale and push him behind him, because there was more than just apples coming out of those trees, and if a feeling _this_ intense hit the angel while he was still recovering from Heaven-knew-what Gabriel had done—

Except he couldn’t, because Aziraphale had already wrapped his arms (both of them, good and bad) around Crowley and buried his face in Crowley’s shirt.

“Angel! Angel, _let go_ —you great idiot, d’you feel that? If _that_ gets its claws in you—”

“ _Feel_ it?” Aziraphale asked. He pulled away enough to look Crowley in the face. Even as his perfect blue eyes brimmed over with tears, he was smiling. “My darling boy – it puts Tadfield to shame!”

_Tadfield?_ What on earth did Tadfield—

Crowley’s eyes went wide. “ _Love_? You think this is _love_?”

“Of course it is. What else could it be?”

“It’s fucking _pissed off_ is what it is!”

Aziraphale’s face somehow hardened and softened at the same time. “Crowley … do you think there’s any power in the world that’s greater than a furious love?”

Crowley looked around.

The trees had spread damned near everywhere, branches swaying in the nonexistent breeze, still dropping apples. But more interesting was what the trees had done to the angels who were still standing. Some of them had collapsed, sobbing; others were curled up knees to chest, rocking back and forth. And a few had simply fallen face-first to the ground. Even Gabriel was on all fours, staring at the floor in what Crowley could only call catatonia.

What was more important was what the angels weren’t doing. None of them were upright; none of them were fighting – unless one wanted to count Samael, and while she was upright, she wasn’t fighting. Both arms had fallen to her side, and she was staring around in slack-jawed shock. So was Mephistopheles.

One of the tree roots lifted and Crowley jumped—but all it did was set the Wabbajack rolling toward him. Crowley grabbed it and caught himself muttering, “Thankssss,” before he could stop himself.

The fury lessened somewhat, leaving a sense that Crowley could only identify as a polite, _You’re welcome._

He shivered.

The tree branches began to rustle. Crowley scrambled to his feet, hauling Aziraphale with him—or maybe Aziraphale hauled him; it was difficult to tell—

The branches parted—Crowley hefted the Wabbajack—

And out limped Dionysus, shirt covered in blood and leaning heavily on somebody’s flaming sword. Which was also covered in blood.

“What the fuck happened to you?” Samael gasped.

Dionysus blinked. For the first time since they had met, Dionysus looked tired. He ran a hand over his face, and his fingernails still looked like claws. “Sandalphon,” he said. “But don’t worry.” He shot a grin at Samael with teeth that were just a touch too sharp. “I happened to him harder.”

There was absolutely nothing to say to that, which was probably why none of them said anything. At least until Mephistopheles nervously cleared his throat. “We should—we should probably get the crown and, um. Go.”

“Right,” Samael said. She slapped her hand on the doorpost, and the doors behind her swished open.

“After you, angel,” Crowley said, putting one arm behind Aziraphale’s back and guiding him forward. He walked slowly enough that he hoped Dionysus would be able to overtake them, so Crowley could keep an eye on the daft god.

No such luck—even when a trailing branch passed over Aziraphale’s shoulder, causing the angel to stop dead and stare at his arm. There was no stain there anymore, no sign of a hole, and to judge by the way Aziraphale awkwardly flapped that arm, no pain, either.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale whispered wonderingly to the tree, and they continued on.

Crowley was halfway through the door when he looked back to check again on Dionysus.

Dionysus had come to a dead stop—a bit of trailing branch or maybe root or maybe even a sapling had twisted itself around his bad leg—Crowley almost shouted and turned back to haul that overgrown weed off Dionysus—

But the branch/root/sapling slipped away, leaving Dionysus with a whole pant leg and, to judge by the way he no longer leaned on the sword, a whole leg-leg as well.

And then—

Well, maybe Crowley was hearing things. Because he’d heard Dionysus speak in Greek before, but never _modern_ Greek.

Still, he knew what he saw – Dionysus putting a hand on the nearest trunk – and what he heard was this:

“ _Efcharistó, Progiagiá._ ”

* * *

In the gaming chamber in the Underworld, seven gods stared silently at the bank of televisions.

Eris was the first to break that silence. “What,” she said slowly, “the _fuck_ was that?”

“Hera …” Zeus began.

“I’ve never seen any of the apples do anything like that before,” Hera whispered. “Zeus, do you—do you remember the villa we bought just outside Sparta in, oh, it must have been the sixteenth century? I tried to plant one of the apples there; it wouldn’t even grow!”

“But,” Athena stammered, “but if you didn’t know—if you didn’t think that would happen—then why did you—”

And as she stammered, Hermes muttered to the table – too softly to be heard, except perhaps by the one person who was meant to hear it, “ _Efcharistó, Progiagiá._ ”

As for Hades and Persephone?

They said nothing.

But they did look at each other, a swift sidelong glance, a quick meeting of the eyes, a quicker meeting of the minds.

And then, not even looking around the rest of the table, both of them began to scribble furiously.

* * *

The Reliquary was still, hushed, like a library or a church or an art gallery in the middle of a weekday afternoon. Like the rest of Heaven, it was clean and white, brightly lit. There were pillars and plain white pedestals here and there with artifacts resting on top of them. Each artifact was lit above and below, the two lights meeting in the middle to cancel out all but those shadows that were absolutely necessary to show off the object to best effect.

And like the rest of Heaven, it was clear that whoever was in charge of the thermostat had heard all the griping about corporate air conditioning and thought the solution was to turn up the A/C. Dionysus shivered.

“Are you all right, dear boy?” Aziraphale asked. It should have been barely above a whisper, but in the stillness it carried, and everyone had turned to look at Dionysus.

He shook his head, realized what that would telegraph, and switched it to a nod. “I’m fine,” he lied.

Crowley’s eyebrows arched high above his sunglasses.

“Don’t worry about me,” he tried again.

Aziraphale tutted and shook his head. “Well, somebody has to.”

And that—that _hurt_ , because even though Aziraphale sounded nothing like Ariadne, it was what she _always_ said when Dionysus told her not to worry about him, and that—that—

He swallowed hard and stared at the pristine white floor that he could practically see his reflection in. They were going to get her back. They were _so close_. They were going to get her back.

“Let’s just find the crown and get the, uh, _something_ out of here, yeah?” he said around the lump in his throat.

No answer. Dionysus looked up.

Aziraphale and Crowley were shooting each other speaking glances – Mephistopheles wasn’t even bothering to hide his concern – but it was Samael who spoke. “Were we ever that young and dumb?” she asked Mephistopheles.

Mephistopheles opened his mouth.

Mephistopheles closed his mouth.

“I … am honestly not sure,” he replied.

Samael threw her head back and laughed. Really _laughed_. And somehow, despite the museum-like hush, despite the chill of Heaven that threatened to seep into his bones and freeze him from the inside out, it sounded right. “Oh, Mephistopheles, never change!” She threw and arm around his shoulders and drew him closer. Mephistopheles jumped, but came along, and if Dionysus’s eyes weren’t deceiving him, he might have been smiling.

“Come on, let’s get the crown and get out of here,” Samael said, sparing Dionysus the trouble. She and Mephistopheles turned around – Samael keeping her arm around his shoulders – and wandered through the pillars and the artifacts.

Crowley and Aziraphale exchanged another set of glances, then, without a further word, wandered off on their own search for the crown.

As soon as the eyes were off him, Dionysus’s shoulders sagged, and he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

The truth was, he was tired – bone-weary in a way he couldn’t remember being in … in a _very_ long time. He was a god built for pleasure, for freedom, for insight – not heroics.

So even though Gaia’s apples had healed his leg (and Dionysus was not kidding himself; there was no way anything purely of _Hera_ would be that benevolent to _him_ ), Dionysus still leaned on the sword as he hobbled through the Reliquary.

His eyes glazed over a long coat made of animal skins, a slingshot, a branch from an olive tree. And they ignored a woman’s veil with the image of a face on it and a ram’s horn and a truly horrible hat. None of them were the crown, so they didn’t matter; Dionysus didn’t care—

On one pillar stood a small wooden cup.

Dionysus stopped dead.

That wasn’t—it _couldn’t_ be—but it looked—

“Aziraphale,” Dionysus heard himself asking, “is that—is that—”

“The crown?” Aziraphale asked, hurrying over—until he stopped. “Oh. No. That’s just the Holy Grail.”

The Holy Grail. The sword started to rattle, probably because Dionysus’s hands were shaking, and every breath he took was slow and wet.

“Dionysus?” Crowley asked, and hot on his heels was Aziraphale’s, “My dear boy, what’s wrong?”

Dionysus swallowed hard and wiped his eyes, which were _not_ tearing, thank you very much, or if they were it was because of—of allergies to all the dust that had to be in here. Or maybe he was allergic to Heaven itself. “You—you have to understand, _Last Crusade_ went through about a dozen scripts before we finally had a workable story,” he babbled.

“Crusade? What crusade used a script?” Samael asked.

But someone else inhaled sharply. “Indiana Jones,” Crowley said.

“Who?” asked Mephistopheles.

“It’s a film. We’ll add it to movie year,” Crowley said.

“The whole trilogy,” Dionysus said, laughing a little wetly. “Not _Crystal Skull_ though. Ari and I—”

The words came out before he could choke them back, although he ended up choking anyway. “There, there,” Aziraphale said, patting his back, and Dionysus had to swallow a few times before he could try to speak again.

“Anyway, we—Stephen and George and I _think_ it was Jeffrey, but I could be wrong, and of course Ari and I – we were trying to hammer out the story, trying to figure out what Indy would have to do to get the Grail – or not get the Grail – and we went off on a tangent about prop design and what the Grail ought to look like, and someone … I don’t even remember who, other than it wasn’t me … someone was talking about making a jeweled chalice, all gold and stuff, because it would have to look good, right? And Ari …”

He laughed. It still sounded wet. “Ari slammed her notepad down on the table, looked him in the eye, and said—I’ll never forget it—‘Jesus H. Christ was a carpenter from Palestine. If he’d been drinking from a golden chalice, the Romans wouldn’t have crucified him for rebellion; they’d have done it for theft!’

“And that’s …” Dionysus gestured to the cup. “That’s where that sequence came from. In the movie, where Indy has to figure out which cup is the right one. It’s the one that a first-century carpenter in a backwater corner of the empire would have been drinking out of. Because … because at the end of the day, Ari’s a practical soul.”

_And you were right, Ari,_ Dionysus thought. _Not that there was ever much doubt. But you were right all along._

“And to think,” Samael muttered, softly enough that Dionysus wasn’t sure she had meant to be heard, “the likes of Gabriel and Sandalphon hadn’t even _met_ her.”

Dionysus looked at her, one eyebrow raised, but Samael was shaking her head and turning away, Mephistopheles hurrying along in her wake with a faintly concerned look. Dionysus wondered—

No, he didn’t need to wonder. He remembered the angel gaslighting the intern, Aziraphale’s rage when he saw the photos, the strange lockstep of the Heavenly evacuation, Gabriel switching from callousness to affability and back again in the time it took to blink.

A practical soul who took no bullshit would make the lives of the Heavenly authorities _miserable_.

_Good,_ Dionysus thought, and even though he knew he shouldn’t, that they didn’t have time, he fished his phone out of his pocket (not covered in blood, good) and snapped a photo of the Grail. And he sent it to Ari’s phone (still in her purse, safe in the Underworld) with the caption, **You were right.**

And then he went back to wandering the pillars, searching for a crown. Until—

“Found it!” Crowley called. Dionysus looked up.

Crowley was standing before a pillar, and on that pillar was a finely wrought golden crown.

“Don’t touch it!” Aziraphale said, hurrying over.

“Don’t— _Somebody_ , angel, I wasn’t born yesterday, I wasn’t going to touch the bloody thing—”

“Allow me,” Samael said, cutting in between Crowley and the pillar. “Mephistopheles?”

Mephistopheles was already holding open the knapsack.

Samael took a deep breath, then, carefully, picked the crown up, and just as carefully deposited it into the knapsack.

Every single being in that room, remembering the alarms that had sounded in Hell with the scales, held their breath.

But nothing happened.

The breath was let out in five sighs of relief – and five shamefaced grins afterward. Mephistopheles closed the knapsack and slung it over his shoulder.

“Let’s get out of here,” Samael said, leading the way to the door with a spring in her step, Mephistopheles right beside her. “We’ll probably have to run, but if the fire upstairs is still burning, we might be able to get away with the lift trick again.”

Dionysus swung the sword up, and Aziraphale and Crowley both adjusted their holds on their weapons – just in case.

Samael opened the door—

Outside it stood the miniature apple tree forest and a phalanx of angels. At the head of the phalanx stood Michael, her battle-armor soot-covered and dented, with fire in her eyes and rage in her voice as she shouted, “ _Samael_!”

Mephistopheles slammed the door shut.

For a second, Samael simply stared at the closed door. Then she swore, flipped open a keypad by the side of the door, and started pressing buttons.

“Now what?” Crowley demanded.

_BANG!_

“Oh, dear,” Aziraphale murmured.

“Is it just me, or does that sound like a—” Dionysus started.

_BANG!_

“—battering ram?” Dionysus finished.

“Just a bit,” Samael muttered. She grabbed Mephistopheles’s upper arm and hauled him back just as a second set of doors materialized in front of the first.

The banging was now muted but no less insistent.

“How are we getting out of here?” Mephistopheles asked Samael.

“I—I don’t know—there’s—there’s only one way in or out …”

“There’s only one _door_ in or out,” Dionysus corrected. “What’s on the other side of the wall?”

Samael blinked sharply, then put a hand to her head. “I—I don’t …”

“It doesn’t matter! We just need to put a hole in it!” Mephistopheles said. “Dionysus, can you make another Molotov cocktail or five?”

“No!” Samael grabbed Mephistopheles by the shoulders. “No, no, no, we are _not_ lighting Hellfire in here! The—the security system—we have _fire sprinklers_!”

“With enough accelerant—” Dionysus said.

“HOLY WATER! There’s _Holy Water_ in the sprinklers!” Samael forced out.

Mephistopheles lost what little color his face had.

“Right, that’s out then,” Crowley said. “What about the ceiling? Could we punch a hole through that?”

“HOLY. WATER. FIRE. SPRINKLERS!” Aziraphale shouted, but Dionysus …

Dionysus wasn’t listening.

He looked at the far wall.

He looked at his hands.

He looked at the wall again.

_BANG!_

That bang was a lot louder. Samael swore and darted to the keypad again.

“Right,” Dionysus muttered to himself. “Mephistopheles?”

Mephistopheles looked up.

Dionysus handed him the flaming sword. “Hold this.”

Then he marched over to the far wall, rolling up his sleeves as he went.

“Dionysus?” Aziraphale asked, hesitant and more than a little worried.

Dionysus didn’t answer. He came to the wall – blank and white and featureless, like every other wall in Heaven that wasn’t a window – and took a deep breath.

Right.

He was Dionysus, God of Wine, Theater, and Ritual Ecstasy. He was one of the Twelve. Son of Zeus, from the same stock that created Heracles, strongest of the heroes.

And this? This was just a wall.

Dionysus made a fist, pulled his arm back, and punched with all his strength. The crack of impact reverberated through the room like thunder.

“Dionysus!” shouted—someone; it didn’t actually matter. Because though the wall held firm and Dionysus’s hand smarted like hell, Dionysus had felt something in that punch.

He’d felt something give, and it wasn’t his hand.

Dionysus ripped off what was left of his tie, wrapped it around his hand, and punched again.

And again.

And again.

And _again_.

Until there was a fist-sized hole in the wall.

_BANG! BANG! BANG!_

This was taking too long.

Dionysus dug his stinging hand into the hole, braced his other hand against the still-solid wall, and _pushed_.

Every muscle he had – and several he had not been aware of until that moment – strained with the effort.

And the wall shifted. Creaked. Groaned under the pressure.

Dionysus pushed harder, and with more than just his muscles.

Tiny vines sprouted from the fingers of the hand in the hole and burrowed deep into the walls, snaking their way into whatever spaces were available and growing and growing until those spaces were big enough to admit more vines.

Power flowed from his other hand, the power buried deep inside Dionysus that he rarely let out. The kind of power that one needed to turn a ship full of sailors into dolphins or carry a soul out of the Underworld, and it had been ages since he’d done anything like that.

And it still wasn’t enough.

He squeezed his eyes shut and reached even deeper – not just for power, but for the force that gave it fuel.

Every strong emotion he’d felt since he rode the elevator up to Heaven he threw at the wall. Irritation and nerves, then horror – at the way Heaven treated its people, at the way Aziraphale reacted and Samael didn’t react. Fear, when four archangels came to crash the party in the offices. And—

The anger coursed through him with a physical kick, and Dionysus let himself ride it. Anger, _fury_ at Gabriel and Sandalphon, because _how fucking dare they_ , they had no idea what they were trying to destroy—and Sandalphon had had the _gall_ to bring up Ariadne when he thought he had Dionysus as his mercy—

Ariadne …

_Here’s much to do with hate, but more to do with love,_ whispered a thousand Romeos played across hundreds of years, and oh, wouldn’t Ariadne hate to be compared to that play? _“I have all the sympathy in the world for a pair of trapped teenagers, Dionysus, but I don’t want to be a trapped teenager – I_ was _a trapped teenager and I’m lucky I got out in one piece.”_

Ariadne …

Ariadne, the first time he’d seen her smile, really smile, dancing around the fires in the Naxos woods, wine coursing through her veins.

Ariadne huddling off to the side in Mount Olympus, goblet in hand and ready with a sly smirk or a quirk of the eyebrow when Dionysus glanced her way for support.

Ariadne with the first of many, many proto-clipboards, waiting in the wings of the Theatre of Dionysus, her tongue adorably flickering between her lips as she checked the script and listened to the lines and waited for the cue to shove the next actor onto the stage.

Ariadne reaching for his hand and him clinging to it in the hall of Olympians, as Zeus bellowed from his throne about how they were all fools, useless, every one of them, _how_ was it that they had allowed the cannibalistic cult of a condemned criminal to steal all of the mortals’ attention and affection and worship?

Ariadne at the bow of a ship, one of their many transatlantic voyages, throwing her arms out wide, letting the wind and salt spray tangle in her hair (and oh, how she’s swear at it and curse her own stupidity later, when she tried to get the tangles out), sending a saucy wink over her shoulder when she felt him looking.

Ariadne by his side at a meeting over a hundred years ago, listening to a group of madmen and geniuses laying the foundation of what would eventually become Hollywood.

Ariadne planting herself like a tree as Dionysus stormed out of that meeting, far too able to imagine what films would do to his beloved stage, hands on hips and glaring up at him and asking him if he wanted to lose mortals’ affection and worship _again_ or if he wanted, this time, to be part of the change. _“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,”_ she’d said, and _gods_ had she been right.

And Ariadne in the backyard of Jasmine Cottage, staring up at him and saying, _“Before I get into this—I swear to Gaia I was trying to keep you safe and out of trouble.”_

Because that was the sort of person she was, wasn’t it? Wouldn’t even let Zeus hold her back from something she actually wanted to do, but she’d try to shield him from the consequences if she could, never mind what the consequences might be to her for getting into it with his father—

And now she was _gone_ and she’d been _stolen_ from him by a group of demons and angels who were too scared of all that she represented to bother to see her as a person. But it didn’t matter, because Dionysus was going to get her back if it killed him, and he’d already harrowed Hell for her and killed an archangel and been hit by Hellfire and been slashed with a flaming sword _and he would be FUCKING DAMNED IF HE LET A WALL STAND IN HIS WAY NOW!_

He might have shouted that last part.

He _definitely_ shouted when the wall exploded in a blast of light and heat and power. And he nearly went tumbling into the hole it left behind, but someone – Crowley? – grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back.

It took Dionysus a second to return to himself after that and register what he was seeing – a blast hole in the wall, opening out onto clear blue sky dotted with white, perfectly fluffy clouds.

“That’s,” Mephistopheles said, gaze drawn inexorably outward and downward, “that’s a l-long way d-d-down.”

Samael reached out and wordlessly took his hand.

Dionysus looked down as well. He couldn’t see the ground – only more white fluffy clouds. But how was that a problem? This was a non-Earth plane; one couldn’t exactly expect the geometry to be perfectly Euclidean.

_BANG!_

“Well,” Dionysus said, “I think it’s time to go, don’t you?”

“G-g-g-go? Go _where_?” Mephistopheles asked, looking between the hole in the wall and Dionysus and back again.

Everyone else – even Samael, even Aziraphale – was doing the same thing.

“Out!” Dionysus said, gesturing to the hole in the wall. “Before _they_ come in!”

“But …” Samael said, staring down, “but that’s—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Dionysus groaned. “You have _wings_ , you idiots! _Jump_!”

And with the confidence of a god who had all but invented the phrase _hold my beer_ , he suited the action to the word.

* * *

“Fuck!” Eris shouted, fiddling with the keyboard. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“What’s fuck?” Athena asked.

“Oh, _come on_ , I know you’re famous for never having done it, but even _you_ have to know what fucking is—”

“ _ERIS_!” Zeus bellowed. “You know that’s not what she meant!”

“Ugh! _Fine_!” Eris turned to face her family. “It’s the cameras, ok? Loki and I put the cameras in the building, not outside it! I can’t trace them if they leave the building!”

“And this is hardly the lake of fire, that joins up to the Phlegethon …” Hera murmured. “Zeus—what realms border Heaven? We need to make some calls.”

Zeus paled, but instantly dug his phone out of his pocket.

A laugh from the opposite side of the table forestalled him. “Not necessary, Pater.”

All the gods turned to see Hermes leaning back in his chair, smirking. “I can take it from here.”

“Hermes,” Hades said slowly, as if he had an inkling of what Hermes was planning and did not like it one bit.

“You didn’t do anything after Dionysus tore that archangel apart,” Eris said, one eyebrow arching.

“He didn’t need it,” Hermes replied, waving his hand like he hadn’t been pale-faced and sweating bullets at the time. “But now he’s done something really impressive, so he should be rewarded for it. And who better to give him that reward but his favorite older brother?”

With that Hermes shook a caduceus from his sleeve and cockily saluted the rest of the gods around the table. “Later, dudes!”

And disappeared.

* * *

The winged sandals caught Dionysus, as he knew they would. His “jump” took him maybe six feet down from the hole.

It was plenty. Dionysus started to run.

As he’d hoped, that spurred the four winged beings behind him into following. “DIONYSUS, YOU BLOODY MORON!” Samael shouted after him.

“Moron? _I’m_ the moron?” Dionysus turned around, running backwards – which was much easier to do in these sandals than in any other set of footwear. “You have wings! I have winged sandals! How does doing the obvious thing make _me_ the moron?”

“Dear boy,” Aziraphale said, although to judge by his tone, Dionysus wasn’t particularly dear to him at the moment, “do the words ‘fall from grace’ mean anything to you?”

_Fall from …_

Dionysus glanced at Mephistopheles, whose face had gone ashen and who was clinging to Samael’s hand and not looking down. And he looked at Crowley, who was harder to read, thanks to the sunglasses, but who was flying with a studied nonchalance that was clearly anything but nonchalant.

Dionysus winced. “Well—you can yell at me in group therapy. But let’s _go_ before we’re too poked full of holes to need it!”

And then he turned around and kept running, the angels and demons soaring to keep up.

Left to his own devices, Dionysus had no idea how long he might have kept running. The blue sky before him was featureless and vast, and the sprawling city that lay to his left gave him no clue idea where they might actually go to find a way out of Heaven before that phalanx of angels burst through the door and figured out where they had gone. Someone had to step up and play navigator _soon_ —

And someone did, though it wasn’t any someone Dionysus had been expecting.

“Yooooooo-hoooo! Baby brother!”

Dionysus almost stopped. His head snapped toward the voice—

It was Hermes! Hermes was here and—

Dionysus blinked.

It was Hermes. Not a ghostly image of him. Not an astral projection. _Hermes_ was _here_. How—

It didn’t matter. Dionysus didn’t care. He ran for Hermes – and Hermes ran just as quickly for him.

“Hermes!”

“Kid!” Hermes threw his arms around Dionysus and clapped him on the back – and just as quickly pulled away (not letting go) so he could survey Dionysus at an arm’s length. “You look like shit.”

“Yeah, yeah, and you look like …” Dionysus blinked and looked again. Hermes was dressed as he hadn’t been for thousands of years – linen chlamys, wide-brimmed hat with wings, winged sandals, and nothing else.[4] “You look like your entire wardrobe went up in smoke. What sent you digging in the back of the closet?”

“And to think, I imagined that you would _appreciate_ a good costume,” Hermes said, clucking his tongue. “I’m the psychopomp! Gotta dress the part!”

“Psycho-what?” Samael asked – oh, good, they’d caught up.

“Guide of souls,” Aziraphale translated. “But we aren’t dead.”

“Yet,” Crowley added, looking over his shoulder.

“Semantics,” Hermes said, waving a hand dismissively. “You all have souls – more or less – so you count. And, you know, I figured you could use a ride out of here.”

“Ah,” Dionysus said, and part of him – a small part that he tried to quash, because it didn’t matter, it really didn’t – was a bit hurt. Everyone else, after all, had gotten a reward from their sponsor, and while he hadn’t _needed_ a sponsor, and certainly didn’t need a reward, it—well. Very few would enjoy being told, if not in so many words, that they were still the least and littlest of the Olympians and their cool big brother had to show up and pull their fat out of the fire, again.

But didn’t matter. Because Dionysus did need his fat pulled from the fire. And he had to get Ari back, and if being teased for the rest of eternity about this was the price of that … so be it.

“Plus, you know,” Hermes went on, “a display like _that_ – punching a hole through the wall of _Heaven_?!? Great Gaia! Anyway, that deserves a reward, and if a get-out-of-jail-free card isn’t a reward, what _is_ , I ask you? Oh, and kid?”

Dionysus, still reeling from the word _reward_ , could only ask, “Yeah?”

“Next time Pater gets pissed at you, remind him of that display. That ought to keep you out of the doghouse for at least the next couple millennia.”

Dionysus laughed. It came out as more of a howl than a chuckle, but it was a laugh. Sort of.

Hermes smirked and looked as if he might say more, but a sudden bellow – “ _SAMAEL_!” – cut that off.

“All right, enough jawing. Time to blow this popsicle stand.” With that, Hermes held out the caduceus, angled so each of them could grab one the snakes’ coils. “Get in, losers. We’re going to the Underworld.”

With that, each of them took hold of the caduceus, and they disappeared from Heaven in a blaze of light. 

* * *

[1] Possibly literal, although Crowley wouldn’t lay odds as to whose.

[2] Gabriel had somehow grabbed another sword, which was hardly fair – it had taken Aziraphale six thousand years to get another blessed sword after he “lost” his, and Gabriel was able to get one in five minutes? What, did they grow on trees up here?

[3] Or what was left of Sandalphon.

[4] Unless one counted the caduceus he was holding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Tags to Mind**
> 
> **Fantasy Violence:** Gabriel attempts to attack Aziraphale with a quarterstaff; Crowley pushes him out of the way and is hit instead. (He's fine, just knocked out of the way.) Dionysus and Samael take on Michael, Sandalphon, and Uriel while Aziraphale launches himself at Gabriel. They fight for a bit (Gabriel with the quarterstaff, Aziraphale unarmed), and Aziraphale does pretty well until Gabriel deliberately hits him on the old war-wound/scar. Aziraphale falls, but the way he falls brings his attention to the can of worms in his pocket. Gabriel pulls a flaming sword out of the ether and monologues a bit before what he intends to be the final blow, but Aziraphale draws the can of worms out of his pocket at the last second and, with a "Not today, Satan," launches the worms at Gabriel. Covered in slimy, wormy goodness, Gabriel is thrown back.
> 
> If this is something you want to skip, stop reading at "because there was a sudden swish of air and a panicked “Angel!” and a push out of the way and—" and start up again at "“AAAAAAAH!!!!” Gabriel screamed and dropped the sword".
> 
> **Fantasy Violence, Part 2** : Our Heroes are fighting Gabriel, Sandalphon, and half a platoon of angels. Things are going fairly well for the heroes - Dionysus fighting Sandalphon; Aziraphale fighting Gabriel; Crowley, Mephistopheles, and Samael with the range weapons handling the platoon - until Crowley hears Dionysus cry out in pain - Dionysus is sprawled on his back with a leg injury and no sword in sight, Sandalphon (still armed) standing over him. Sandalphon attempts to gloat, and when Dionysus tries to kick him in the (nonexistent) nuts, makes the mistake of pointing out that Ariadne had tried the exact same thing. Dionysus turns into a leopard and pounces on Sandalphon. Before Crowley can see what happens there, he gets tackled to the ground by Aziraphale (Gabriel shot some Heavenly power at him). Gabriel gloats (are you detecting a pattern here?), and Crowley grabs the first "weapon" he can (Hera's apple) and throws it at Gabriel. It bounces off Gabriel's forehead. Nothing appears to happen at first. Offstage, Sandalphon screams (and then stops screaming very suddenly).
> 
> If this is something you'd want to skip, stop reading at "All in all, Crowley thought, this whole fight could have been going a lot worse." and start back up again at "But Crowley wasn’t looking at Gabriel."
> 
> I think those are the only tags that need minding. And I _think_ this will be the last mind-the-tags chapter (wahoo!). And with that out of the way, you know the drill: leave a comment (if you like) and hit me up on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/) if you'd like to chat!


	29. Love Dares You to Care

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are _no tags to mind_ in this chapter. Wahoo!

When the globe spit Ariadne out, it was in the hedge maze of Eden, not on Earth.

Truthfully, she’d been expecting that.

Still, the breath left her in a woosh and she leaned forward, hands on knees, trying to slow the racing heartbeat that she didn’t actually have (but good lucking telling it that).

“Mmmmrph?” asked Asterion, his shadow falling over her as he hovered by her side. Ariadne didn’t have to look back to know that the trellis was behind her, probably with the mist cleared.

“I’m fine,” Ariadne said, taking another deep breath. “Or at least in the same neighborhood as fine.”

She then glanced up and leftward, where Eloise typically planted herself, and sure enough, there was Eloise. “How much of that did mutton-chops actually say to Aziraphale?”

A flash of dry amusement crossed Eloise’s face. “Quite a bit of it. Is there something in particular that’s bothering you?”

How had she … never mind, Ariadne didn’t want to know. She took another deep breath. “Pathetic excuse for an angel.”

“Ah.” Eloise nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid Sariel did call him that.”

“Why?”

“Mostly for the reasons he stated. Your father did appear in Heaven – let me see, how did Sariel put it – without a sword, without a body, late for Armageddon—”

“That’s not what being an angel is about!”

Eloise tilted her head to the side and raised one eyebrow. “Oh?”

Ariadne flushed and looked away. “What it’s—that is—they’ve spent at least two thousand years selling themselves as the good guys. The people who are there to help. Not …”

“Warriors for a holy cause?” Eloise asked. She rested one hand on her hip and raise an eyebrow. “I think, if you look at the literature, you’ll find plenty of material playing up that angle as much as, or more than, the other one.”

That was … disconcerting, if true. “Did they bother to tell the mortals that their holy cause involved wiping out the human race as the prelude to their pissing match with the other side?”

“Mmm, sort of. But most of the humans who actually believe it manage to convince themselves that they won’t be part of the slaughter.”

Ariadne sighed and forced herself to stand up. “Don’t the Abrahamics claim that their god is love?”

“Oh, yes,” Eloise said softly.

“Is _that_ true?”

“Yes,” Eloise said without hesitation.

“Then either the Abrahamics are using a definition of _love_ that isn’t in any dictionary I’ve ever seen, or somehow Heaven missed that memo.”

She didn’t wait for Eloise’s reply – she just started walking. Asterion quickly fell into step with her, looking over his shoulder repeatedly.

Ariadne kept walking, mulling over everything she’d seen in Heaven, trying desperately to _think_ and game out what exactly she’d been meant to take from that exercise – unless, of course, it was that Heaven was just as bad as Hell, another Death Star in need of blowing up—

No. No, that couldn’t be it. Eloise had brought up the stormtroopers earlier, and now Ariadne had gotten a good look at them, and had seen …

_A bunch of clones and child conscripts, forced into a battle they didn’t make by powers outside of their control?_

If that was true, it was terrifying.

“… Ariadne?”

Ariadne looked back. Then stopped. And turned around.

Eloise hadn’t moved from the spot where Ariadne had left her. “The—the Almighty, the Abrahamics’ divinity, is ineffable. So—so by definition, the love that—that They experience would also be ineffable.”

_Ineffable._ Aziraphale had used that word on the wall. He’d seemed to think it meant something more than the definition he’d given – like it explained everything, waved away all sorts of discrepancies, like it answered more questions than it asked.

“But—ineffable though that love may be …” Eloise seemed to be weighing her words very carefully, at least until she took a deep breath and drew herself up. “It is not a love that would demand the blood sacrifice of billions as the first act of a – as you put it – pathetic pissing match.”

Ariadne blinked. “So you’re saying that Heaven missed the memo?”

“Well …” Once again, Eloise wouldn’t meet her eye. And her answer, when she gave it, wasn’t exactly to the point. “Have you ever read a book called _Small Gods_ by Terry Pratchett?”

“Terry—wait, the Discworld?”

Eloise looked up with a grin. “Yes! Yes, you know it?”

“Um …” _Small Gods, Small Gods,_ which one was that … “Wait, is that the one with the turtle? And—and crossing the desert?”

“Yes, yes!”

Yes, Ariadne had read that one, but—when had it been? She remembered where better than when – Barcelona, so perhaps 1988? Or was it 1992? And she remembered, too, that Athena had been the one to bring the book with her, had raved about it to anyone who would listen (not many people would), until, in a fit of misplaced pity and curiosity she was afraid she’d regret, Ariadne had asked to borrow it. Athena had lent it eagerly.

Ariadne remembered being surprised and impressed – and not only at the first evidence in centuries that Athena possessed a sense of humor. But also at the cleverness of this Pratchett fellow. He hadn’t the least idea how gods worked, but his insight into human nature had been surprisingly astute—

“There is a passage in that book,” Eloise was saying, “describing what happens to a god, sometimes, when a church builds up around it. There’s a sort of shell – of prayer, ceremonies, temples, clergy – eventually the scaffolding, as you might say, overtakes the structure, to the point where the people believe in the structure, not the god. And …”

Eloise sighed. “Well. In the book, the god dies.”

“But gods don’t—”

“Let me finish. The important part is next. The god dies – and no one notices.”

Ariadne said nothing at first, letting that settle. “You’re saying that Heaven has gone full _Triumph of the Will_ , believing its own propaganda to the point where the Almighty might not even be running the show anymore. And nobody’s noticed.”

Eloise only smiled.

“Except …”

Now Eloise blinked and frowned.

“Pratchett was writing about mortals—well, I guess angels and demons are technically mortal,” Ariadne corrected, remembering Ligur, “but—”

“People,” Eloise corrected. “Pratchett was writing about people. Some of them were shaped like humans. Some were shaped like dwarves. And some were shaped like trolls and golems and werewolves and—and even gods! But they were, and are, all _people_.”

Ariadne’s eyebrows slowly rose.

“Ariadne,” Eloise said gently, “you’ve lived for a long, long time among humans. And you’ve mingled with gods and god-adjacent creatures for as long as you’ve been alive. How different are those groups, really?”

At first glance? Very. The idea of comparing whatever experience a mayfly mortal could pick up in a few decades to the cumulative wisdom of centuries was laughable. And mortals were so reckless; they had to know how fragile their flesh-wrapped sacks of blood and bones were, yet sometimes they acted like _they_ were the ones who were immortal …

Ariadne sighed, because she saw where the train of thought was going before it even rolled out of the station. “You know, there are some people who wonder if maybe the mortals created us in their image instead of the other way around.” She hesitated, then added, “And sometimes I wonder if they might have a point.”

Asterion huffed in alarm; Ariadne patted his arm.

But Eloise only smiled. “Think less in terms of who created whom, and more in terms of variations on a theme.”

Ariadne raised an eyebrow but decided not to ask. Instead, she glanced at the sky.

The sun was lowering, the shadows lengthening. If she didn’t want to spend another night here, she’d best get moving.

“I’ll—I’ll think about that,” Ariadne replied. “But for now …?” She nodded to the rest of the unconquered labyrinth.

“As you wish,” Eloise said.

So they walked. And as they walked, Ariadne thought. If angels and demons were people – well, that made things easier and harder, because if any one thing was true across all people, it was that people were _different_ , individuals, that you couldn’t tar them all with the same brush no matter what camps they sorted themselves into.

But at the same time … angels and demons were hardly as incompatible as they appeared to be, and if what she had seen in Heaven was true, then the soldiers in their army were as diverse as the soldiers in any other army, and not all of them wanted to be there, and if the same was true of Hell, then—

Somehow, when they rounded the next bend, Ariadne wasn’t surprised to find her train of thought interrupted by another rose trellis. This one was painted gray, and the roses that climbed over it were black and white, deep red and pale blue.

Ariadne sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “And to think, I was finally getting somewhere.”

“Perhaps the trellis is here because you were getting somewhere?” Eloise asked.

“To stop me from getting there? Or to help me get there?”

Eloise’s only response to that was a noncommittal noise, which Ariadne supposed she ought to have been expecting.

Hands on hips, she narrowed her eyes at the trellis and the gray mist lurking inside it. “Let me guess – no sword again?”

“ _Definitely_ no sword.”

“And how much will I regret not having it with me?”

“This time? Not much, I hope.”

Ariadne took a deep breath and nodded. She glanced at Asterion with a sideways grin. “You know the drill, buddy.”

Asterion nodded and drew himself to attention, brandishing the sword like one of the palace guards of Knossos. Ariadne laughed.

Then she turned back to Eloise and popped off a salute. “Well – see you on the other side.”

* * *

The other side of the trellis had nothing but pale sands, blue sky – and a boy. Eleven or twelve years old, with light curly hair and a blue jacket. And he looked familiar—

Ariadne blinked. This was the boy she’d seen in the presentation. But he’d been smiling in his picture, with a mischievous light in his eyes. Now, he looked …

Scared. Adam Young, the literal Antichrist, looked _scared_.

_Oh shit._

“Adam? What’s wrong?” Ariadne heard herself asking, even as she walked closer to him, because—well, Antichrist or no Antichrist, he was a kid. Just a kid. And unlike most of the other divinities in Ariadne’s acquaintance, she’d not only been a kid once, she’d been a kid for the usual amount of time that mortals were kids, _and_ she remembered the experience. Being a kid meant being scared a lot of the time, and if the adults around were in any way responsible, it was their job to figure out what was making the kid scared and deal with it.

“He’s coming,” Adam said, and gulped.

“Who—” Ariadne started, and stopped. Because she knew. It was a feeling in her bones, an ache, a pull, a sense of rage and hatred and anguish hot enough to burn the entire world.

Ariadne bit down on her first three responses, because none of them were appropriate for a child’s ears.[1] “Satan?” she finally asked.

Adam nodded. “And I think—”

Something rumbled. Not the ground or the air, but something just outside those things, as if wherever Ariadne and Adam were, it was in a safe bubble away from the rumbling thing – but the bubble could pop at any moment. Ariadne rushed to Adam’s side.

“I think he’s angry,” Adam finished.

“Right,” Ariadne said, all the while looking around, trying to think. Was there somewhere they could run? Fly, even? The idea of the likes of her being able to take down the likes of Satan was ludicrous—and she couldn’t rely on Adam for help, he was just a kid—

_Why_ couldn’t she have brought the sword with her?

“Because I didn’t want to end the world,” Adam went on. “And because me an’ my friends told those other guys – the nightmares – to bugger off.”

“With my dads,” Ariadne murmured, still trying to think—

“Nah, they got there after. Although they did help with the other two. The um, the person with the bug on zir head, and the guy with the purple eyes—”

Ariadne stopped dead. The bug-headed person didn’t ring any bells,[2] but the purple eyes … “Gabriel? Tall, dark hair, American accent, punchable face?”

“That’d be him.” Adam grinned.

“And you told him off – and his friend? Good for you,” Ariadne replied with a grin of her own.

As if to prove that they couldn’t have nice things or a nice conversation, another rumble rippled through their little bubble.

“Seems a bit unfair,” Adam muttered. “He doesn’t even show up for eleven years, an’ now he thinks he can just turn up an’ tell me off. Some father, that.”

Ariadne snorted, only half paying attention, the other half of her mind whirring with plans and plots and ideas, _any_ ideas, to get this kid away from danger before Satan Himself showed up in their little bubble. “Tell me about it.”

“Is that what your dads did to you?” Adam asked.

“ _What_?” Ariadne gasped, every shred of her focus zeroing in on Adam.

“Left you,” Adam said, shrugging. “Didn’t show up at all for most of your life. An’ then they do, an’ … all they care about is what they want from you.”

“No, no, of course not, why would you—oh,” Ariadne stopped, a few pieces clicking into place in her mind. “No, I wasn’t talking about them. I was talking about—about Minos. My, um. Let’s go with my mother’s husband.”

Adam wrinkled his nose and turned his head to one side. “Huh? You have a mother, too?”

“Yeah, she—” Ariadne blinked and realized this didn’t have to be hard. “Well, you’re adopted, aren’t you?”

“I guess so,” Adam replied, as if that angle hadn’t occurred to him before.

“So you have parents who raised you. Are raising you. A …?”

“Mum and dad,” Adam filled in.

“Right. And so—well. I had a mother who raised me. And her husband …” Ariadne shuddered. “Let’s just say, he did things that meant—that meant he couldn’t be my father anymore.”

“Couldn’t be your father anymore,” Adam repeated, musingly. He looked up at her, questions in his gaze.

Ariadne looked down at him, and—

It couldn’t possibly be that simple, could it?

But—but Ariadne had decided a long time ago that Minos was not her father, even before she’d found out that she had two other fathers who actually cared about her as a person, not a pawn in some political/divine game of chess. Even before she’d found out that Minos hadn’t even sired her. And if she could decide that …

And Adam—Adam had _power_. Power that, even post-Apocalypse-that-couldn’t, made Tadfield a no-go zone for angels and demons alike. She and Dionysus (mostly Dionysus) had spent over a century seeping into the very bones of LA, trying to make it _theirs_ in a way that would cut off that kind of interference, and their walls still weren’t as strong as what Adam had put together in eleven years – without even _trying_.

“Adam,” Ariadne said, thoughts of fighting gone, thoughts of flying gone, crouching so she was closer to his level.[3] “Adam, you know that asshole out there isn’t your father, right?”

Adam’s nose wrinkled. “But—”

“ _Listen_ ,” she said, and she felt bad for cutting the kid off, but time was not on their side. “A father isn’t someone who—who shows up for one night and—and _please_ tell me you know where babies come from?”

“Yeah, we did that in school last year.”

“Oh, thank Gaia,” Ariadne murmured. “Anyway, it takes way more than that to be a father. A father has to put his kids first, not himself. And—and I really don’t see Satan doing that, do you?”

Adam’s snort said all that needed to be said.

“And you …” Ariadne grasped for words and took the first ones that came. “You don’t owe him anything, Adam. You don’t have to do what he says. You can choose something else.”

“But what if he tries to make me?” Adam asked. “Or—or just … poof!” he said.

A question for the ages, especially since Ariadne was not in the business of telling anyone, let alone kids, that it was their job to give up their lives for anyone else. She swallowed hard. “I won’t lie to you and tell you that I won’t let that happen,” Ariadne said instead. “I—I might not have much of a choice in that. But you …”

She looked directly into his eyes, no wavering, no blinking. “You are your own person, Adam, and you have your own power. If _anyone_ can tell Satan to take a long walk off a short pier, it’s you. And …”

She took a deep breath and held out her hand to him. “I don’t know what I can do against—against someone like Satan. But I’ve spent almost my entire life figuring out how to survive when surrounded by people much more powerful than I am. So I might be able to help. And I can tell you this: you can change the world, Adam. You just have to believe you can do it and decide to do it.”

Adam looked at her hand and swallowed. “And—and you’ll be there?”

“Until the bitter end, kid,” Ariadne swallowed.

Adam took a deep breath of his own and took her hand. “Then let’s do this,” he said.

And reality twisted – and shifted – and suddenly—

* * *

Ariadne once again found herself stumbling forward, wings out for balance, into …

She blinked.

She was back in the labyrinth.

She whirled around. “What about the kid?!?”

“Easy,” Eloise said, holding both hands up. “Easy. He’s fine. He told Satan off weeks ago. And your fathers were there with him the whole time.”

“But I said—I _told_ him—”

“Ariadne,” Eloise said gently, “there would have been nothing you could do against Satan. That was Adam’s battle to fight.”

“Alone? _He’s a kid_!”

“No, not alone.” Eloise stepped through the trellis, Asterion following a step behind. “Your fathers were with him. And his friends. And—well—a nice witch, new to the neighborhood; her boyfriend who isn’t what he seems; a witchfinder; and a part-time psychic. He had plenty of support. But.” Eloise rested both her hands on Ariadne’s shoulders. “The battle was his.”

Ariadne sighed, her entire body unspooling like a marionette with cut strings. “And he won?”

“He did. Human incarnate, that boy,” and now Eloise’s smile turned impossibly fond, “telling Heaven and Hell both where to stick it.”

“And now I have to finish the job,” Ariadne muttered.

“Yes. And …” Eloise gently turned Ariadne around.

Before her was an apple tree, flowering and fruiting all at once. Ariadne’s heart dropped.

“I think you’re ready to start the work.”

_No,_ Ariadne thought, even as Eloise nudged her forward. _No, I’m not ready! I still have no idea how I’m going to convince Heaven and Hell to leave everyone alone! I still need—_

“Ariadne?” Eloise asked, a hint of concern coloring her voice.

“I need to think,” Ariadne said, twisting her shoulders out of Eloise’s grasp and circling the tree. Asterion caught up to her. Eloise stayed put.

Asterion let her make two full orbits of the tree – or at least Ariadne thought that was what she did, with the way her thoughts were spinning, she could have made a half-orbit or a full orbit or twenty orbits and not noticed – before tapping her on the shoulder. Ariadne looked up at him.

Asterion gestured to the tree and raised an eyebrow.

Ariadne sighed. “Look, it’s—it’s one thing for _her_ to say I’m ready,” she said, “but I don’t—I still don’t know what to _do_. How the heck do you get a couple million stormtroopers to abandon the Death Star?”

“Mmmrph?”

“I know, I know, I still need to explain that, I’ll do it—”

Ariadne choked on the last word. It should have been _later_. Except—

Well. For all that she might have been a bit fuzzy on the details of the tree and the apple and the snake, talking with Eloise – and seeing her parents’ meet-cute – had certainly told her what the ending was. Eat the apple, and you have to leave the garden.

Forever.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ariadne whispered, dropping to the ground and holding her head in her hands.

Asterion thumped down beside her, making alarmed noises.

Ariadne peeked at him from between two fingers. “Asterion, I …” She took a deep breath. “I’m going to have to—”

_No._

Eloise had said that the labyrinth was about choices and the making of them. Her parents had both chosen to turn against their own sides and take the side of Earth and all who lived there. Adam had chosen to deny his biological parentage and be his own person. If Ariadne ate that apple, it would be by her own choice—and the least she could do was acknowledge that.

She didn’t have to do this. She could get up, take Asterion’s hand, walk out of the labyrinth and pretend this had never happened. Let Heaven and Hell sort themselves out, or not. Let the other gods decide how to deal with the rogue religion that thought it had the right destroy the world, or let them squabble among themselves until Armageddon came again.

Let Dionysus and Crowley and Aziraphale and Persephone and Eris and everyone else she had ever known or cared about just … go on without her.

Perhaps it was selfish, but that was the thought that hurt the most, that decided her if any one thing did.

She took a deep breath and tried again. “When—when I decide to eat one of those apples? I’ll go. And I won’t—I won’t be able to come back.”

Asterion’s eyes widened and his nostrils flared.

“I mean, d-don’t get me wrong—if I was making the rules here—well—yeah, I’d definitely eat the apple, but—but I’d be _back_. To visit. Because—because I don’t want to leave you alone, even if I can’t t-take you with me. But …”

Ariadne wiped her eyes, even though she didn’t have tear ducts and thus no reason why she would need to wipe her eyes. “I don’t make the rules.”

Asterion sighed and looked away.

She wondered what he was thinking. He certainly wasn’t about to tell her. Asterion only went that still and stiff when he had no desire to let anyone know what was on his mind.

She wouldn’t blame him if he were angry. She’d said far too many things too much like this in another labyrinth a long time ago. And when she had finally decided that maybe she didn’t have to play by someone else’s rules, that maybe she could make her own way out and take Asterion with her—

Well.

Asterion probably still hadn’t forgiven her for that, and she didn’t blame him.

She put a hand on his arm, a feather-light touch that was gone in a moment. Just enough to tell him she was with him, that she understood. “I’m sorry,” she said, and meant it.

Asterion looked back at her. His head was tilted slightly to one side; other than that, his expression was inscrutable.

Then, with a crinkling of the eyes that might have been a smile on a human, he patted her head.

It felt like forgiveness. Maybe just for leaving him again. Or maybe for everything. Regardless of which it was, it was more than Ariadne had ever thought she would have – had any _right_ to have – so she would take it.

“Thanks,” she said, not bothering to hide how shaky and wet her voice was.

Then, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and leaned her head against the trunk.

She still needed to think.

Eloise had said that Heaven and Hell needed to be brought to heel. That Ariadne, somehow, had to be the one to do it. And that before she could leave and do that, she needed the apple and the sword—

_No. Wait._ That hadn’t been what Eloise had said. _“They each gave the humans a gift, you see. … And Adam and Eve couldn’t have gotten very far without either of those gifts.”_

“Can—can I see the sword?” Ariadne asked, hoping Asterion wouldn’t question how thick and watery her voice still sounded.

He didn’t. He handed her the sword instead, scabbard and all.

Keeping a close eye on Asterion, Ariadne slowly pulled it out.

Here under the tree, the sword didn’t look like much. It was just a gladius. Not even on fire. And while, sure, an edged weapon – particularly one that could catch fire – would have come in very handy for Adam and Eve once outside the proto-Disney World of Eden, that … that couldn’t be all this sword was, could it? Not when Crowley had helped them learn the difference between good and evil.

So what had Aziraphale really given the mortals?

_Protection,_ said a voice deep inside Ariadne. _Or what’s better – a way to protect themselves. Self-defense._

Ariadne hefted the sword carefully. She was no warrior. Helping to choreograph thousands of swordfights, dogfights, fistfights, and full-scale battles for the stage and screen had shown her that. But …

Well, she’d looked a demon in the eye and squired Holy Water right in his face, hadn’t she? And had kicked his buddy into a safe. And she’d slammed Theseus’s face into the floor a few times.

Even if all of those scenes had been trickery, illusions, they’d _felt_ real. And … now she felt, perhaps, a bit more equipped to take on the next bunch of angels and demons who came for her blood.

As for the second gift …

Ariadne looked up into the leaves of the tree, boughs covered in apples and blossoms. “Do you really think eating an apple will show me the difference between good and evil?” Ariadne asked.

Asterion grunted in surprise and looked up.

“I mean,” Ariadne sheathed the sword, set it to the side, and wrapped one arm around her knees, “I’ve been to my fair share of symposiums – back when they were about drinking wine and talking philosophy, before they became about … about talking philosophy and _then_ drinking wine, I guess. I’m not sure mortals know the difference between good and evil, when you come right down to it. If they did, they wouldn’t need to argue about it so much.”

Asterion tilted his head to the side, watching the sun play through the leaves. Then he looked back at Ariadne and raised an eyebrow.

“The thing with good and evil,” Eloise said, and Ariadne almost jumped – but she should have known better than to expect that Eloise would leave her alone to talk this out by herself, “is that they’re not really two sides of the same coin. More like a Möbius strip.”

Ariadne raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it cheating for you to tell me that?”

“Certainly not. You’ve already found your way to the heart of the labyrinth. Cheating doesn’t really apply anymore.”

“Ah.”

“And really, if you’re talking about moral quandaries and exercises … well.” Eloise dropped to the ground on Ariadne’s other side. “The thing is, you can’t ever separate an act from its circumstances and its consequences. For instance, most people would say that saving a baby from certain death is always a good thing, except …”

In the past seventy-five years, give or take, conversations involving babies and morality tended to trend one way, so Ariadne said with confidence, “But if the baby turns out to be Hitler …”

Eloise nodded. “Precisely.”

“But you can’t know that going into it,” Ariadne said – and hesitated. “Well. Usually. Unless you’re a time traveler – or Apollo. Or someone Apollo wanted to sleep with.”

“Or Agnes Nutter, or a Fate or a Norn or … well, even if the list of exceptions can get rather long, your main point still stands. When you toss the stone into the pond, you can’t know where every ripple will go.”

“The butterfly that flaps its wings doesn’t know it’s causing a hurricane.” Ariadne turned to Eloise. “I haven’t eaten an apple yet.”

“I noticed.”

“So how am I able to have this conversation?”

Eloise chuckled. “You’re not human, Ariadne. The rules that apply to them don’t all apply to you.”

_The rules …_ Ariadne’s gaze whipped to Asterion.

Asterion had looked up, eyes very wide, ears hopefully cocked.

“Does—does that mean—”

“But one of the rules that applies to all thinking beings, be they human, angel, demon, _y_ _ōkai_ , selkie, Sidhe, nāga, or even a god, is that they can’t know the full consequences of their actions before making a choice. They have to simply look at the facts at hand make the best possible decision under the circumstances.”

“So in other words, telling me if I’ll ever be able to see Asterion again would be cheating,” Ariadne said.

“I’m afraid so,” Eloise replied.

Ariadne sighed. “And I won’t be able to think my way out of the problem you’ve dumped into my lap until I have both of my parents’ gifts.”

“Correct.”

“So …” Ariadne looked at one of the apples. Its branch obligingly bent down so she could more easily pluck it.

Ariadne raised an eyebrow at Eloise. “How is _that_ not cheating?”

“You look so comfortable. Seemed a shame to ruin it.”

Ariadne shook her head, plucked the apple, and – not giving herself more time to second-guess herself – took a bite.

Nothing happened, except for the branch returning itself to its former position. Mouth still full, Ariadne raised an eyebrow at Eloise.

“You need to eat the whole thing,” Eloise said helpfully.

Ariadne nodded and munched away. Eating by herself like this without offering a slice to Asterion felt wrong – but, well, Eloise had said she needed to eat the whole thing. And she wasn’t about to find out the hard way that eating the apple would get Asterion kicked out – without a body and with no place else to go.

So she ate. It was—well, it was like eating an apple. The same smooth slipperiness of the skin the sweet-tart taste, the juice dribbling down her chin, … Ariadne had eaten thousands of apples in her lifetime, and this was no different.

And when there was nothing left but a core …

Ariadne let her hand fall. There was no flash of insight, no eureka moment. She didn’t feel any different.

No, that wasn’t true—she felt heavier, somehow. More solid. She went to rub her stomach—

Wait—that felt like bare skin—Ariadne looked down—

“ _What the fuck_?” she yelped, staring at her naked body—Asterion yelped too, covering his eyes with both hands—

“Sorry, sorry!” Eloise said, snapping her fingers even as she laughed. “Couldn’t resist, sorry!”

And Ariadne was wearing clothes – but not just any clothes. She had on her favorite pair of jeans, the pair she’d bought back when jeans first became acceptable casual wear for women and that did amazing things for her ass – so amazing that she had magicked them through dozens of styles just so she could keep wearing them. And the t-shirt she was wearing wasn’t just any t-shirt, but the Leia the Hutt Slayer t-shirt she’d bought when Carrie had died.

If—if she had to pick an outfit to wear to go out and kick some ass in—this would be the outfit she’d pick.

Ariadne rubbed the cotton between her forefinger and thumb; then she looked up again, at the tree and the apples and the sunlight playing through the leaves …

_Oh. OH._

She finally understood what Crowley’s gift to humanity had been. And with that, everything else slotted into place.

“So,” Eloise asked, “any insight?”

“Yeah,” Ariadne said, nodding slowly. “But first, a question?”

“Ask away.”

“There are a lot of apples on this tree.” She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow at Eloise. “Is there any rule against me taking a few for the road?”

Eloise grinned.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

* * *

The sunlight reached out in long, lazy fingers, half-blocked by shadow as Ariadne, Eloise, and Asterion approached the wall. The sun itself already disappeared behind the mountains and the far wall, leaving most of the Garden cloaked in darkness.

_Don’t let the sun go down on you here_ , Ariadne thought, and smiled.

She would, of course, be leaving via the Eastern Gate.[4] It was only appropriate.

“And you’re sure I’ll have enough apples?” Ariadne asked, shrugging the shoulder that had the rucksack – which was packed full of apples, more apples than would actually fit in the rucksack if any of them had cared about things like “not plucking every apple on the tree” or “the laws of physics.”

“Yes,” Eloise said. It was not the first time, but her patience had not run thin. Or out. “They will grow wherever you plant them, reaching full maturity in minutes, never mind what magic or miracles you use on them. Even your father’s methods will work.”

“Aziraphale’s?” Ariadne asked, wrinkling her nose and wondering what was so bad about Aziraphale’s plant-keeping methods.

“No, Crowley’s,” Eloise said. Then, catching Ariadne’s confusion, shook her head. “Never mind. He’ll know what I mean.”

“And they’ll all work just like the original?” Ariadne checked again, just in case.

“They will indeed,” Eloise said.

“Good.” Ariadne took a deep breath. At least that half of the plan was sure. The first half … the first half she hadn’t come up with yet. But hopefully the Serpent of Eden, the Angel of Eastern Gate, the God of Wine, the Goddess of Discord, and some of her other friends and in-laws would have an idea or two to help things along.

The gate was only a few steps in front of her. Ariadne took a deep breath and shifted the rucksack again, then checked the sword-belt and scabbard to make sure the sword was still there and not burning through anything she’d need later.

Ariadne looked into the gaping black maw that was the Gate and gulped. _Were Adam and Eve this nervous?_ she wondered.

“Worse,” Eloise said, as if she’d read Ariadne’s mind. She took a deep breath, wrapped her arms around herself as if she was cold, and let that breath out slowly. “They didn’t realize they’d have friends waiting for them on the other side.”

“But they had each other,” Ariadne said.

“That they did.”

“And …” But Ariadne didn’t finish that thought. She was too buy looking over her shoulder.

At Asterion.

It seemed that every step he’d taken had been slower than the last, and now, at the end of the journey, he hung several steps behind, kicking the dirt with every step.

She didn’t need to see his face to know it would break her heart.

She didn’t turn back. She’d gone too far to turn back now. But she did take a deep breath, adjust the strap on her rucksack, and wait for him to catch up.

Asterion lumbered forward until he stood just inches away from Ariadne. His head hung low, ears drooping. And he held himself still and silent.

Ariadne reached out and just barely brushed his upper arm. “Hey.”

Asterion slowly looked up. He didn’t need words to ask, _Are you sure you have to go?_

Ariadne closed her eyes. Another deep breath. And she opened them.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure.”

Asterion huffed and looked down again.

“I’m going to miss you so much,” Ariadne said, swallowing hard. “I—I thought of you every day before—before this, you know? And I’ll think of you every day after. But now …”

She had to break off, wipe away the water leaking from her eyes, take yet another deep breath. At this rate she’d have a full yoga routine of breathing exercises in before she even made it to the gate. “You’re ok,” Ariadne said.

Asterion looked halfway up, head cocked to the side, as if to ask, _You sure?_

“ _Yes_. You …” Another swallow. “You have friends here. You—this is a place where you can be you. No—no walls, no traps, no—no stupid people who can’t be bothered to understand someone who is just a little bit different than they are. You’re free. And you’re safe.”

Asterion snorted and touched her shoulder so gently it could barely be called a shove. The question was clear. _And you?_

“Oh, don’t worry about me.” Ariadne laughed. “I might be a lightweight in everything but alcohol consumption, but I’ve got friends who can pack a real punch.”

Asterion huffed and pawed at the ground, puffing himself up like a bull ready to charge. Ariadne almost laughed, almost cried—

“Asterion.” Eloise’s tone was gentle, but it brooked no argument. “We talked about this.”

His shoulders slumped, and his head bowed, but once again, he nodded.

“Besides, I’m—well. I’m smarter than the average bear, you know?” Ariadne went on. “At least sometimes.”

This time Asterion’s snort held just a hint of a laugh, probably at Ariadne’s expense, but she’d take it.

“And …” Ariadne swallowed hard and forced the next words out. “We’re both where we’re meant to be. You—enjoying freedom and getting the—the life you never got. And me, making sure Earth doesn’t end up a pile of smoking rubble.”

Asterion slowly nodded.

“S-s-so …” Ariadne wiped her eyes again. “A hug before I go? Unless you don’t—”

She didn’t get a chance to finish. Asterion swept her into his arms with enough speed and force that the breath wooshed out of her and Ariadne almost worried if her new “corporation” could take the pressure.

Almost. Because she could fix spinal damage and cracked ribs later. A bone-crushing hug from her brother …

Ariadne buried her face in Asterion’s tunic, glad she had no breath for sobbing.

A bone-crushing hug from her brother she might never get to enjoy again.

“Ariadne, Asterion,” Eloise said gently. “It’s time to go.”

Asterion’s grip loosened, and Ariadne slowly backed out of his hold. “See you later,” she said, because even if she never did, she’d be damned if her last words to her brother were _good-bye_.

Asterion gulped hard and nodded.

Then Ariadne forced herself to face the gate and the future, whatever it would hold. But not before a sidelong glance at Eloise. “One last question?”

Eloise’s eyes sparkled, and the corner of her mouth turned up in a sideways smile. “I’d hate to think this was your last question for me, Ariadne, but I’ll certainly answer it for you if I can.”

“Who are you, really? Besides _ehyeh asher ehyeh_.”

The smile deepened. “An excellent question … and one deserving of an equally excellent answer.” She looked up, gaze searching the sky above them. “The truth is, Ariadne, I have been known by many different names by many different people. Every language, every culture on Earth has a different name for me. I could give you a litany of them …

“But that wouldn’t answer your question.” Eloise looked down, and Ariadne caught a glimpse of something ancient and unfathomable in her eyes, of a Power that had existed before the Beginning and would endure long after the End. “So to you, Ariadne, I say this: _ehyeh asher ehyeh_. But _you_ have always called me Gaia.” 

* * *

[1] Even if the odds that Adam already knew those words were realistically 50/50.

[2] Though she was a little impressed by Adam using non-standard pronouns; apparently the kids were all right these days.

[3] She didn’t have to crouch all that far.

[4] Or more accurately, the Eastern Gigantic Hole in the Wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FIVE CHAPTERS LEFT, PEOPLE! The end is in sight, I promise.
> 
> And if you've enjoyed what you've read so far, please feel free to leave a comment or hit me up on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> See you on Thursday!


	30. One Thing Right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is _not_ a mind-the-tags chapter; however, I feel I should warn you that there is some **extreme sappiness** ahead. So. Consider yourself warned!

Ariadne was still wiping wetness from her eyes as she stepped into the black void that was the Eastern Gate.[1] The hand wiping wetness immediately became a hand ready to shield her eyes from the immense brightness that surely waited for her on the other side. She remembered standing on the wall, how the brightness had been so great she couldn’t even look into it.

Except, when she stepped out … there was no brightness.

Ariadne rubbed her eyes – this time for reasons that had nothing to do with the lump still in her throat – and looked around.

She blinked and looked around again.

Sharp rocks in shades of black and charcoal and deep, dark blue and purple. A carpet of soft grass and asphodels, colors muted. No whisper of wind, no birdsong. No cars or planes rushing overhead. And suffusing it all, a gloom that was quite literally stygian.

“The _Underworld_?” Ariadne asked out loud.

The next words that ran through her head were not hers, and the voice that uttered them was not her voice.

_Whatever. This might as well happen. Adult life is already so goddamn weird._

“My life has turned into a John Mulaney bit,” Ariadne said to no one. And then, because she had to, she looked back.

She half expected to see more of the field of asphodels. Instead, there was a blank cliff-face.

No. Not blank. Carved into the face was an etching of a gate. Above the gate was another etching in words Ariadne couldn’t read.

“Speak friend and enter?” Ariadne muttered to herself, drawing the tips of her fingers along the etching. A playful green spark sprung to life, shooting green light along the lines of the gate. Just for a minute, it shone; then, as quickly as it appeared, it was gone again.

Ariadne smiled to herself and nearly said _mellon_ , but decided not to chance it. She had work to do, and, well. She’d probably sassed Gaia enough for one century.

She wasn’t going to think about that until this was all over. She _definitely_ wasn’t going to think about the implications of Gaia’s statement about having a different name in every language until she was someplace where she could have a breakdown in private.

So Ariadne shifted her rucksack on her shoulder and checked the sword again, and she reconnoitered herself. If this was the Asphodel Meadows, then she needed to find the path to Elysium, and once she found the path to Elysium, she’d know—

_There._

She didn’t even need to find the path to Elysium. The place she was looking for – Chthonopolis, the City of the Gods of the Dead, rose to her right. Head down the hill, past the Cave of the Fates, and she’d be well on her way. Distance was hard to measure in the Underworld, since the geography viewed the laws of physics as a suggestion, but surely it couldn’t be more than a few hours’ walk.[2]

And once she got there … there were any number of places she could go, but she’d head for Hades’s palace. If Persephone was down here (how long had she been in Eden? Had summer already turned the corner to fall?), her how-do-I-get-home problem was effectively solved. If Persephone wasn’t, Hades would surely let her borrow his phone. Probably even offer her a bedroom for as long as it took to get a ride out of here. He _was_ the Host of Many.

Thus decided, Ariadne squared her shoulders and started walking.

She wasn’t home yet. Certainly wasn’t free, with her task weighing on her more heavily than her rucksack.

But she _would_ be. And that was all that mattered.

* * *

Mephistopheles found himself gazing curiously around the cave that the Fates called home. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was simply because it felt like a lifetime had passed since the last time the twelve of them had stood there. Or at least a few centuries.

The Fates had made some changes since they’d left. Three pedestals of rough-hewn rock stood between them and where the Fates sat spinning, measuring, and cutting their threads. It was not at all hard to guess what the pedestals were for.

What the Fates had not done was say anything when the twelve of them reentered the space. It was obvious what they were waiting for. So this time he and Samael were at the head of their little group instead of the rear, Samael having put out her cigarette outside the cave. As for Mephistopheles, well. He _was_ the one holding the bag.

He cast a nervous glance at Samael out of habit. She let a smile poke at the corner of her lips out of friendship. With that to help him steel himself, Mephistopheles reached into the bag and pulled the scales out. Without thinking he put them on the left pedestal, the sinister side.

Then he took the silk handkerchief Aziraphale had thoughtfully lent to him and reached into the bag again. Carefully, not letting a hint of his skin brush the metal, he pulled the crown out and handed it to Samael. She put it on the right pedestal because, well. The _right_ pedestal.

The third pedestal must have been for the sword, and for it to be in the middle felt correct. The sword had, after all, always belonged to humanity.

Scales and crown safely deposited on the pedestals, Mephistopheles and Samael took a step back.

Like an actress who had heard her cue, Klotho looked up from her spinning. Her hands still moved in a pattern as old and familiar as time itself. “Well done, God of Wine, Angel of the Eastern Gate, Serpent of Eden, Archangel of Destruction, and Tempter of Faustus.”

“And well done, Messenger God, Queen of the Gods, Goddess of Discord, God of Thunder, and Goddess of Wisdom,” added Lachesis.

“And well done, King of the Dead and Goddess of Spring,” concluded Atropos.

“By your efforts, Hell has been harrowed and Heaven pillaged.”

“By your efforts, the Scales of Famine and the Crown of Pollution have been removed from the hands that would use them for destruction.”

“By your efforts, the world is that much safer.”

“Great. Fantastic,” Dionysus said as soon as the third sister had finished their speech. “Now, where’s Ari?”

Mephistopheles had not survived as long as he had without developing a keen sense of how to read beings more powerful than he. And the Fates were a stick of dynamite to his candle-flame. So he saw when the rhythm of Klotho’s spinning skipped a beat, the measuring-stick in Lachesis’s hands jolted, and the light flashed oddly off Atropos’s scissors.

Mephistopheles’s eyes went wide.

Klotho was the first to speak. “We told you already, Wild One.”

“Our responses are limited,” Lachesis added.

“You must ask the right questions,” Atropos repeated.

Dionysus took a deep breath, even as his hands clenched into fists at his side. “How do we get Ari back?”

There was another pause. Three sisters took their eyes off their threads and exchanged glances with each other. It was quick, it was subtle – it was doubtful anyone other than Mephistopheles would have noticed.

But he did notice.

“That is not the right question,” Klotho said.

“It is not for you to get her back,” Lachesis added quickly into the silence.

“Her fate is not in your hands,” Atropos said.

That, Mephistopheles thought a shade hysterically, was probably a good thing, given how Dionysus’s hands were starting to shake. “You,” Dionysus’s voice was shaking as badly as his hands, “you said that when we brought you the scales and the crown, we’d get her back.”

“That is not what we said.”

“That may have been what you heard.”

“But it is not what we said.”

“We—we—” Dionysus started.

“Roaring One,” Klotho said, and Mephistopheles almost thought her tone was gentle, “the belonging you seek is not ahead of you, but behind.”

For a second there was silence. The stillness of Creation holding its breath before the first ray of light. The pause between the flash of lightning and the crack of thunder, between the final beep of the timer and the bomb going off, between the gulp of air and the scream—

When Dionysus broke it, his words were not at all to the point – whatever the point might be. “ _Maz Kanata_? Instead of just telling us, you’re ripping off _Maz Kanata_? Who next? Yoda? Mickey Goldmill? Mr. Miyagi?!?”

Lachesis winced. That was an actual wince. Mephistopheles _saw_ it. “What we tell you is true. You must learn to—”

“What you’re telling us,” Crowley interrupted, “could stand to be a little bit clearer.”

And Mephistopheles—Mephistopheles couldn’t look at him. Or Aziraphale. Looking at Dionysus was one thing; Dionysus was a volcano about to erupt; you couldn’t _not_ look at him. Whereas if Mephistopheles looked at Crowley or Aziraphale, he’d—he might—

“I need a fucking cigarette,” Samael said, shoving past the gods to get closer to the exit of the cave.

“Me too,” Mephistopheles said, even though he’d never smoked a day in his life and didn’t intend to start now.

He followed her from the gloom of the cave to the slightly different gloom outside the cave. Mephistopheles slumped against the rocky wall, unable to say a word.

Samael, true to form, was already fumbling in her pocket for a cigarette, and when she pulled one out, she fumbled with the lighter. Mephistopheles extended a thumb to her from force of habit.

Samael lit the cigarette with an absent, “Thanks.” And when she brought it to her lips, the first drag burned it halfway down to the filter.

Mephistopheles ran both hands down his face.

No further sound passed between them until Mephistopheles heard the clicking of the lighter again. Once again, he extended a lit thumb. And once again, Samael thanked him.

The voices inside the cave were still raised in argument, but Mephistopheles couldn’t make out the details, a fact for which he was grateful.

“D’you think …” he started, and stopped.

“Unfortunately,” Samael replied. She shifted so her shoulder rested against the rock wall, her body angled toward Mephistopheles. “But about what in particular?”

He gulped. “D’you think—we did the right thing? Discorporating her?” he asked. And felt almost—ashamed?

“I don’t know,” Samael whispered.

Mephistopheles’s hands pressed flat against the rock wall, and he gazed out into the middle distance, toward the hill—

He blinked.

There was—there was a person on that hill. Not a shade (he’d seen a few), a _person_. And—

Mephistopheles blinked again, shifting the eyes of his corporation to farsightedness.

They went wide.

And then he started to laugh – well, more howl like a hyena, but close enough.

Samael started. “Mephistopheles?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Look!” he said, pointing. “We’re idiots!”

Samael looked.

Her jaw dropped.

“Holy fuck,” she whispered.

“Reckon that’s how it all started!” Mephistopheles laughed and, well, so what if it was a terrible pun; she’d walked right into it, hadn’t she? Not that he had time to care, he was too busy flinging himself back into the cave with a shouted, “ _Guys_!”

The group of gods, angels, and eldritch beings stopped talking (shouting) and looked at him.

“Literal!” Mephistopheles shouted. “They’re being—she’s not _ahead_ , she’s _behind_! Literally!”

The furrowed brows and worried frowns of the Fates cleared, and as one sister looked to the next, Mephistopheles knew – if he hadn’t known already – that he’d gotten it right.

The gods were a bit slower on the uptake. “What?” Dionysus asked.

“Oh, _come on_!” Mephistopheles laughed, and, grabbing Dionysus’s hand, dragged him out of the cave – never mind that Dionysus was a head taller and a stone heavier and an _Olympian god_ besides.

And once they were outside, he shoved Dionysus forward, pointed, and shouted, “ _Look_!”

Dionysus looked. Mephistopheles wished he could have seen his face.

But in a way he didn’t need to. Because the sudden, sharp intake of breath, the whoop, and the shout really said it all.

As did what he, well, said.

“ _ARI_!”

* * *

Dionysus didn’t realize how firmly his heart had lodged in his throat until Ariadne looked up, stopped short, and called, “ _DIONYSUS_!”

And then his heart might have exploded. And he didn’t _care_. She was back; she was safe; she was in one blessed piece and absolutely nothing else mattered.

Dionysus didn’t realize he’d started running toward her until the scenery started flying past. Ariadne started running at the same time, skidding down the steep hill, wings out for balance. And when Dionysus was almost at the foot of the hill and Ariadne almost down the slope, she jumped for him, wings flapping even though they both knew that the lack of wind down here made it practically impossible for her to fly—

It didn’t matter. All Ariadne needed was a controlled fall to take her those last few feet, so Dionysus could catch her and spin her around and hold her close and never, ever let her go.

“ _Ari_ ,” Dionysus whispered into her hair, holding her as tightly as he could, and maybe he should put her down, give her some air, but Ariadne had wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck and her wings around the pair of them, and Dionysus was fine with all of that. More than fine. He’d hold her like this forever – never mind the oversized rucksack and whatever it was that kept smacking his legs – if it meant she’d be safe and happy forever.

Ariadne was breathing hard in a way that had nothing to do with the hill she’d run down. Dionysus wanted to whisper to her, tell her it was all right, everything was all right, he was here and she was here and they were together now, but his own breath was catching too hard on unvoiced sobs to get the words out, so he didn’t. He just cradled her close and held her tight.

Eventually Ariadne stirred – Dionysus reluctantly loosened his grip – but she didn’t go anywhere, just pulled away enough so those gorgeous sky-blue eyes could flicker all over his face with an expression that was difficult to read.

Dionysus smiled, and Ariadne smiled shakily back. He wanted to say something to her – _I love you_ or _Are you ok?_ or _Please never leave me again_ – but all that came out was, “Hi.”

“Hey,” Ariadne replied. One of the hands around his neck loosened, probably to wipe the moisture gathering in her eyes, and Dionysus should help her out, do it for her, offer her a handkerchief or something, except that would require letting go—

The hand that she loosened didn’t go to her face. Instead it tangled in his hair.

Her gaze flickered between his lips and his eyes, searching for invisible permission, as if the answer to anything she wanted wasn’t _yes, yes, a thousand times YES_.

Maybe she found it, because she barely closed her eyes before mashing their lips together in the messiest, least skilled, most embarrassing kiss they’d ever enjoyed sober.[3]

It was also the best kiss they’d ever enjoyed, period.

Neither of them technically needed to breathe to survive, so there was no need to part when air got short. So they didn’t. Dionysus certainly couldn’t figure out the point of air when he had Ari in his arms, warm and moving and gloriously alive, tugging his hair so she’d have him exactly where she wanted him—and that was fine with him; there was nowhere else he wanted to be.

But all things – good, bad, mediocre – must end eventually, and about the time when the lightheaded feeling began to shift from pleasantly fuzzy to just this side of painful, Ariadne pulled her lips away. Dionysus might have chased them, except she closed her eyes, leaned her forehead against his and breathed very deeply. All right, so she wanted a rest; that was fine. It would have been fine if she said she’d had to foreswear all physical contact in order to come back to him, so long as she’d come back to him, so a rest was nothing, really.

Somehow Dionysus had ended up on the ground, Ariadne in his lap, knees bracketed around him. Ariadne tangled both her hands in his shirt, and he rested most of his weight on one arm, the other hand gently skimming her side, up and down, up and down, until their breathing slowed to keep time with the skimming.

“All right?” Dionysus asked as soon as he could spare the breath for it.

“Yeah,” Ariadne said slowly. “You?”

“Oh, I’ve never been better.”

She smiled – and if that smile didn’t hurt in the most delicious of ways, then Dionysus understood neither pleasure nor pain – and opened her eyes. “Li—”

She stopped.

Her eyes narrowed.

“Ari?” Dionysus asked, even as the panic started to rise within him, because if something was wrong now—well, he’d just have to make it not-wrong, and how hard could it be after—

“Dionysus,” Ariadne’s words were slow, measured, the way they only were when she was very frightened indeed, “why is your shirt covered in blood?”

“Huh? Oh, that!” Dionysus waved the whole angelic costume away, replacing it with something a little truer to his usual style. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. It wasn’t mine.”

“But—but then whose was it?”

“Sandalphon’s,” said Samael.

“The bald, portly archangel,” Mephistopheles added, ever-helpful.

It was at that point reality came crashing in. Dionysus looked, and—

Yes, there was everyone,[4] watching the show. Dionysus was a little surprised Eris hadn’t handed out popcorn and started giving color commentary. … Although come to think of it, she might have; he’d hardly been in any state to notice.

Ariadne stiffened, and Dionysus realized what this must look like in her eyes. The last time she had seen any of this crew, Samael and Mephistopheles had been trying to kill her; Zeus and Hera were furious with her; and Athena was usually on the size of Zeus and Hera because, well, she was the Goddess of Wisdom. Persephone was her friend, but Hades was always inscrutable; Hermes was on Dionysus’s side but had a self-preservation streak a mile wide; Eris had been using them for amusement but always knew exactly where the line with Zeus was and how not to cross it.

“Hey,” Dionysus said, switching the hand he was leaning on so he could draw the other one up and down her spine in the soothing rhythm that never failed to relax her, “hey, it’s ok. We’re all friends here. Even …”

He didn’t finish. Because he realized, perhaps belatedly, that Ariadne hadn’t been looking at the people who had (ostensibly) tried to kill her, or his family members who were (in her view) varying degrees of furious with her.

She was looking at _her_ family members.

Aziraphale and Crowley stood off to the side slightly. Crowley seemed almost relaxed, one set of fingers jammed into a pocket, hip cocked at a nonchalant angle, face cloaked behind those dark sunglasses – except for the hand that wasn’t in his pocket, which was clinging to Aziraphale’s in a white-knuckled grip. Aziraphale’s free hand fluttered everywhere, straightening his waistcoat and his jacket and Crowley’s waistcoat and jacket. A thousand emotions flickered across his face, too fast to read, and his grip on Crowley’s hand was just as white-knuckled as Crowley’s on his.

“Hello, dear girl,” Aziraphale said.

“… Hi,” Ariadne squeaked.

She was scared, Dionysus realized. She was scared, and _they_ were scared, and somebody was going to have to knock some heads together to get them to snap out of it, and Dionysus was very much afraid that somebody was going to have to be him.

It wasn’t.

Ariadne wobbled to her feet, the rucksack and scabbard[5] by her side doing nothing for her balance. Aziraphale smiled at her, and so did Crowley, or, well, they tried. It didn’t really work for either of them.

“C-could,” she stammered, voice very small, “could I maybe get a hug?”

* * *

Aziraphale had thought Ariadne would never ask. “Oh, my _dear_ girl,” was all he could force out before lunging forward to catch her in a one-armed hug, the other hand still holding onto Crowley’s so that he was dragged along whether he wanted to be or not.[6]

Ariadne hiccupped in a way that sounded dangerously close to a sob, and that simply wouldn’t do at all. With some reluctance Aziraphale let go of Crowley’s hand, intending to pull Ariadne all the way in—

But he couldn’t, because Crowley already had Ariadne’s other side covered. So there was nowhere for Aziraphale’s suddenly-free hand to go but around Crowley, and there was nowhere for Crowley’s suddenly-free hand to go but around Aziraphale, and—

_Oh._ The three of them slotted into place, like puzzle pieces clicking together, and the bands Aziraphale had kept around his heart for so long that he’d almost stopped feeling them loosened, and he could breathe for the first time in literal millennia.

Aziraphale wasn’t sure how long they stayed there, his hand and Crowley’s bumping into each other as they tried to rub soothing circles on Ariadne’s back, Crowley’s spare hand fisted into his jacket. At some point his wings and Crowley’s had popped out, further shielding them from anyone else’s view or interference.

Ariadne was the first to pull away, though it was only far enough to give them a good look. “Th-thanks,” she stammered.

“What on earth for?” Aziraphale asked.

“Oh—oh j-just—the hug—and putting up—with imminent w-waterworks …” Ariadne rubbed her eyes, and Aziraphale reluctantly let go of Crowley to try to locate his handkerchief, except—wait, he’d given it to Mephistopheles, hadn’t he?

“Here,” Crowley said, and there was a square of black silk in his hand, held out to Ariadne.

“Thanks,” Ariadne said with a watery smile. As she dabbed her eyes, she added, “I’ve always got Kleenex in my purse, but Ga—um—well, _I_ don’t know where that’s gotten off to.”

“I do believe Persephone has it,” Aziraphale replied. “Dionysus gave it to her to look after while we. Er. Well …”

“Oh,” Ariadne murmured. Then, looking up at them curiously, “What _are_ all of you doing down here, anyway?”

“Ah …” Aziraphale glanced sidelong at Crowley, to see him raising one eyebrow. “Well, I suppose the short answer is—is looking for you, dear girl.”

As Ariadne blinked rapidly and seemed to be struggling to digest that, Crowley added, “And we could ask the same of you.”

“Me?” Ariadne asked, and then chuckled. “Well, I guess—I guess you could say, _I slithered here from Eden_ —”

The last bit was sung, a tune Aziraphale didn’t recognize but Crowley seemed to, but the last note cut off in an undignified squeal as Ariadne’s eyes suddenly went wide.

“Ariadne?” Aziraphale asked, and nothing more, as Ariadne suddenly started to laugh.

It was not a good laugh. And if that wasn’t alarming enough, Ariadne’s knees buckled and she began to fall in their hold.

“Whoa!” Crowley said, and the two of them hustled her to a conveniently placed rock just the right size for Ariadne to sit on. “Easy, easy, Ariadne. What’s wrong?”

Ariadne continued to laugh, listing to one side, Aziraphale’s side. Aziraphale caught her, and Ariadne held onto him tight; he had no real choice but to lever himself onto the rock (now large enough to comfortably hold the pair of them) to better support her. He shot an alarmed glance at Crowley, only to find Crowley looking every bit as alarmed back at him.

Ariadne chose that moment to speak. “ _Eden_!” she said around bursts of laughter, and then, pointing to Crowley, “ _Slithered_!”

Crowley’s jaw fell and his entire body stiffened. “How … how do you know about that?” He raised an eyebrow at Aziraphale, asking, _Did you tell her?_ But Aziraphale could only shake his head.

“In Eden!” Ariadne seemed to be trying to regain control of herself. It was not working. “I saw—your meet-cute! On the—on the wall!”

“You … you saw …” Aziraphale stammered, staring at Crowley, because—because that shouldn’t have been possible, should it have? Yet Crowley looked just as mystified as he felt.

“Except it’s not a w-wall on this side. More like—a tunnel. With a door. Over there,” Ariadne gestured. “Speak friend and enter!”

“The Doors of Durin?” Aziraphale asked, wondering what on earth the _Lord of the Rings_ had to do with anything.

Ariadne nodded and, clearly giving up the battle with speech, slumped against him to ride out the laughter. Aziraphale absently rubbed her back and tried to rearrange what she had said into something that made at least a modicum of sense.

He didn’t have much of a chance to poke at the problem. “Isn’t,” Mephistopheles asked hesitantly, “isn’t Eden on Earth?”

Aziraphale almost jumped; he’d nearly forgotten anyone else was there. Yet there they were, having barely moved from the last time Aziraphale had paid them a lick of attention.

Except that wasn’t true, was it? Hermes was now next to Dionysus, lightly holding the latter’s arm, and Hades and Persephone had drifted to the back of the group, where they were shooting each other troubled, speaking glances.

“It,” Samael said slowly, answering Mephistopheles, “well … it _was_.”

Aziraphale really had no idea what to do with that statement, but that was fine, because Crowley clearly did. “Are you saying,” Crowley asked, tearing off his sunglasses so he could look Samael in the eye, “that you lost Eden?”

Samael stiffened. “Lost is a—a strong word.”

Crowley blinked. He actually blinked. It must have been for effect. “You _lost_ Eden.”

“As I said, lost is—”

“ _We_ lose the Antichrist, and all literal _Hell_ breaks loose,” Crowley started, “and you just _stand_ there, and you tell us that you lost _Eden_ like it’s nothing?”

Crowley seemed to be working himself into a fine rant, and Aziraphale would have been just as happy to let him go – stopping him was a futile endeavor most of the time, anyway, and perversely the rant seemed to be calming Ariadne down. Her laughter had slowed, and she was now watching Crowley with wide eyes.

Zeus, however, had other ideas.

“What _I_ would like to know,” he said, “is how there came to be a door to Eden in the Underworld— _brother_.” And he glared at Hades.

Hades took a deep breath—

Persephone put a hand on his arm, feather-light, and when he looked down at her, shook her head. Then she stepped forward, drew herself to her full height, placed her hands on her hips, and stared Zeus down.

“Why the Underworld has a door to Eden is a question that can be answered at a later time,” Persephone said.

“Daughter—”

“This is _our_ realm; we are king and queen here; and in it we answer to no one – including you, Father. Right now, we have more important things to concern us.”

Persephone turned, and the dread Queen of the Dead seemed to melt away, replaced by a concerned friend. “Like Ari. Honey, are you ok?”

Ariadne shrugged. Aziraphale did not take that as a good sign. “I’m—ok.” At least she wasn’t laughing anymore. “Thanks for holding on to my purse.”

“Any time,” Persephone said, brows furrowing.

“But—but seriously,” Ariadne said, looking at almost all of them in turn – every single one but Dionysus, Crowley, and Aziraphale. “What are you all doing here?”

And before Aziraphale could let himself grow alarmed by that question, Hermes had answered it. “Like your dad said,” he said, nodding to Aziraphale, “looking for you.”

* * *

By the way Ariadne blinked and stared at Hermes, it was clear that she had absolutely no idea what to do with that information. And if _that_ wasn’t alarming, Crowley would eat his favorite pair of sunglasses.

He found himself slowly sinking onto the rock (now wide enough to fit three) on Ariadne’s other side. He hadn’t the least idea what he’d do now that he was there – certain parties (Warlock) aside, comforting was generally much more Aziraphale’s thing than his – but bless it, somebody had to do it, and he was closest.

“Oh. Um.” Ariadne ran a hand through her hair. “Thanks?” It came out sounding more bewildered than grateful.

Then she took a deep breath and—well. If Crowley was forced to describe it, he would say that she looked like someone packing up an unsettlingly large number of emotions and shoving them into a mental closet marked “Do Not, Under Any Circumstances, Open.”[7] And that was also rather alarming, because in Crowley’s experience,[8] these sorts of closets tended to open at the worst possible times, inevitably burying anyone in their path in an avalanche of boxes, clothing, sporting equipment, and a lone bouncy ball.

“Ari,” Dionysus started, and while Ariadne flashed him a smile – a big smile, possibly the most genuine smile they’d seen from her since she got back – she didn’t let him finish.

Instead, she turned to Samael and Mephistopheles. “So, I take it you didn’t actually want me dead?”

Crowley froze, and Aziraphale’s eyes went wide, and oh _fuck_ they should have thought of this sooner—

Except Ariadne didn’t seem worried. Just expectant, and perhaps a bit curious.

“No!” Mephistopheles said at once.

“Just discorporate you,” Samael said, “and before you get upset—discorporating you was the best way to buy you some time and make sure that the likes of Sandalphon and Gabriel and Hastur didn’t kill you.”

“Which you shouldn’t have to worry about anymore, too much, anyway,” Mephistopheles added, “since Sandalphon and Hastur are …”

“Sandalphon is _very_ dead,” Dionysus said.

Ariadne looked at where the blood had been on his shirt and turned a rather alarming shade of pale.

“And Hastur won’t be troubling you again, either,” Crowley said, as much as a distraction as anything else. “Even a Duke of Hell isn’t coming back from being turned into a pastry and fed to hellhounds.”

Now Ariadne was turning that alarming shade of pale at _him_. “What?” said Crowley’s mouth without his permission. “I just turned him into the pastry; Aziraphale is the one who fed him to the hellhounds.”

“ _Crowley_!”

“ _What_?!”

Ariadne shook her head and took another deep breath. “That is—there is a story there, but that is— _later_.” If Crowley was any judge, that closet door was probably starting to buckle.

She ignored it and turned back to Mephistopheles and Samael. “Why didn’t you want me dead?”

For a moment, there was only shocked silence. Until Persephone broke it, with a slim, hesitant, “Ari?” and a sidelong glance in Dionysus’s direction.

“Yes, yes, I know, it’s rude,” Ariadne said, as if any of them cared about that. “But I think—I think I can guess—but I don’t want to assume. And I …” Now Ariadne rubbed her temple and took a deep breath. “I _need_ to know.”

Mephistopheles and Samael exchanged glances. Then Samael sighed. “I’m going to need a cigarette for this.”

“Do you need another—” Dionysus started.

“This is going to take more than a patch.” Samael fished a cigarette out of her pocket; Mephistopheles already had his thumb lit and ready to go. “Right. Well, do you want the long explanation or the short one?”

“Short,” Ariadne said.

“Good.” Samael lit the cigarette and took a long drag. “Short answer: Hell is awful, Heaven is just as bad and might well be worse, and _you_ were the first hope we had in literal _millennia_ that maybe life didn’t have to be complete shit and that Armageddon wasn’t the only way out.” Samael huffed out a long breath of smoke. “Does that explain things?”

“Yes,” Ariadne said, and she—

She was _grinning_.

“That—yeah, that’s what I needed to know. And!” She snapped her fingers, and the rucksack that had fallen off in their hug-fest bounded over to rest at her feet. “I am pleased to tell you that not killing me was not a complete waste of your time.”

“Ariadne!” Aziraphale gasped, aghast, and Crowley was with him; that last sentence had not been anywhere near sarcastic enough for his liking.

Ariadne shook her head, though what at Crowley couldn’t be sure, and bent to open the rucksack.

She paused. And she looked up. “You said I was hope.”

“Well. Er. Yes,” Mephistopheles said sheepishly.

“You want—you want to be free of Heaven and Hell, right?” Ariadne asked. “To live your own lives the way you want to? To have—choices? Free—free will, you might say?”

Mephistopheles perked up like a parched man suddenly offered a cold drink. Samael took another drag of her cigarette – though her fingers trembled as she did. “Free will is for humans.”

“Well, sure,” Ariadne said. “But is it just for them?”

“That’s …” The cigarette in Samael’s hand was shaking as she took another drag. “That’s what we were always told. Angels don’t have free will. They have to obey.”

Crowley would have had some words to say about _that_ , except Ariadne beat him to the punch. “Then where do demons come from?”

Samael dropped her cigarette.

“But you don’t have to take my word for it. Instead you can …” Ariadne took another deep breath and dipped her hand inside the rucksack.

She pulled out two apples.

Crowley gasped, and he knew he wasn’t the only one.

Ariadne ignored them. “You can take your free will and make your choice, the same way Adam and Eve did.”

Mephistopheles’s nostrils flared. “Are—are _those_ —”

“Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, plucked fresh this morning,” Ariadne said. “Or afternoon? Evening? What time is it, anyway?” She directed the last question to Persephone.

“It’s the Underworld, sweetie,” Persephone said. “Time isn’t really a thing down here.”

“Oh. Well. Ok, then. Plucked fresh, not long ago,” Ariadne said, turning back to Samael and Mephistopheles. “And all for you. Two shiny red apples, yours for the taking.”

Mephistopheles didn’t take his eyes off the apples. But Samael still had questions. “But we—we already _know_ the difference between good and evil.”

“That’s debatable, but also not the point,” Ariadne said. “I mean, sure, for _humans_ , it was the point. Or part of the point. For us … the rules are a little different. But the choice is the same.” She held out the apples to Samael and Mephistopheles. “Eat the apple, embrace your free will and all that comes of it.”

Ariadne brought the apples back to her. “Or don’t. And stay stuck in your ruts.”

“Red pill or blue pill,” Dionysus murmured, and Ariadne beamed at him.

But Samael and Mephistopheles weren’t looking at Dionysus. Or even Ariadne, really. They were looking at the apples and, occasionally, at each other.

Mephistopheles was the first to start forward, but Samael’s sudden grasp on his wrist stopped him. He shot a confused, almost betrayed look at her.

But all she said was, “Together?” in a small, almost scared voice.

Mephistopheles didn’t answer. Instead, he smiled and took her hand.

Together, the two of them stepped forward, and each took an apple. With another sidelong glance and a shared nod, they took a bite in unison.

“You have to eat the whole thing,” Ariadne said helpfully.

As they crunched their way through the apples, Ariadne turned back to Crowley and Aziraphale, poking Crowley and nudging Aziraphale. “You two might want to, um, consider trying an apple, too. I know you’ve mostly embraced your free will, but it can’t hurt.”

Crowley shifted uncomfortably. “Ah, well—eating’s not my thing, you see, and …” He glanced quickly at Aziraphale and just as quickly looked away again. But well, if Aziraphale had put up with everything else he’d done over the years, surely he’d forgive this? “I may have already tried one.”

Ariadne stared at him, blinking, and Aziraphale gaped. “Crowley, you …”

“Look,” Crowley said, a little more heatedly and a little more quickly than he meant to, “it was right after—well—right _after_ , you see? Right after _they_ got tossed out. And I—I couldn’t figure it out, what was so bad about eating the apple, so I thought, ‘Might as well have a try, the Tree’s just sitting there and it’s not like She can get any _more_ mad at me, what with the everything.’ So I did, and …”

Aziraphale’s eyes were very wide, and his lips had parted slightly. “And?”

Crowley shrugged. “Didn’t feel any different. Certainly didn’t get any earth-shattering revelations. So I …” He squirmed; this was more than a little bit embarrassing. “I slithered up the wall and struck up a conversation with you.”

“Oh, _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale said, and that tone combined with that _look_ made Crowley look away before he did something absolutely soppy, utterly embarrassing, and rather mechanically difficult with Ariadne still in between the two of them.

“Anyway,” Crowley mumbled around the tongue that suddenly felt too big for his mouth, “you should …” He nudged the rucksack closer to Aziraphale with one foot. “ _You_ should, angel. Just in case you need a little extra—oomph. If nothing else, it’ll probably be good for your therapy.”

“Oh, well, er.”

Crowley looked up in a hurry, because he _knew_ that tone – and true to form, the angel was blushing and carefully not meeting anyone’s eye. Least of all his. “I may. Er. That is, they _do_ look scrummy, but I don’t—I don’t really _need_ one, if you catch my drift.”

“What,” Crowley demanded.

“It’s just—well, they looked so delicious!” Aziraphale said. “And—and I read the sign, _very carefully_ , three times over! And it said, quite clearly, ‘ _Humans_ – do not eat!’ So I thought, well, there can’t be any harm in it, and if we angels weren’t supposed to eat it, it would have been mentioned in orientation, surely. So …”

“So you ate the apple,” Crowley said, unable to keep the grin at bay.

Shamefaced, Aziraphale nodded. “Yes, and—and, well, like you said, I didn’t feel any different after—only, just as I was finishing, I heard Eve coming up to the Tree, talking to someone, so I dashed away before she could see me eating and start asking questions—and then the next thing I know, there’s a gigantic hole in the wall, the Lord is in a _terrible_ mood, and—”

“And you’re giving your flaming sword away,” Ariadne finished, smiling.

“Well, yes, exactly, but—wait, _what_? How do you know that?” Aziraphale asked.

“I told you—I saw your meet-cute. And …” Ariadne tapped the scabbard by her side. “Well, I’ve got the sword now.”

“What,” Aziraphale said.

“What,” Crowley echoed.

“ _What_?” Dionysus asked.

“Enough!” Zeus snapped. “Mephistopheles, Samael—are you done with your snack?”

Samael and Mephistopheles were holding apple cores and looking a bit shellshocked, so Crowley had to assume the answer was yes.

Zeus made the same assumption. “Excellent. So. I suspect there is a _great_ deal more going on here than I understand, than any of us fully understands. And I believe it is past time that we got some answers. So. We are going back to the Fates. _Now_.”

And for what was quite possibly the first time in the history of ever, nobody argued with Zeus’s decree.

* * *

Samael drifted back to the cave of the Fates with the rest of them.

She felt – how _did_ she feel? On the one hand she didn’t feel any different at all; she was still Samael, still an archangel, still connected to the Almighty through an invisible bond of Grace. (And that was more of a relief than she would care to admit.) On the other hand …

She’d just eaten from the Tree of Knowledge. She was – there was no other word for it – _free_. Free to do as she pleased, free to follow the Ineffable Plan or the Great Plan or a plan of her own devising or no plan at all. There were thousands of potential paths that lay before her, and she’d just tossed her only map over her shoulder and set it on fire.

It was exhilarating. It was _terrifying_. It was everything she’d ever wanted and nothing she’d dreamed was possible. It was—it was—

It was something!

And given the dazed look on Mephistopheles’s face, he seemed to be feeling all of it as intensely as she had.

She dared, for a minute, a brief glance at Aziraphale and Crowley, with Ariadne still between them and Dionysus hovering just behind. Were they sure they had eaten from the Tree? They said they hadn’t felt anything different, but this was—this was—Samael definitely felt different!

Samael stumbled as they crossed into the cave; someone caught her elbow before she could fall; she looked up and—Eris?

“Don’t give me that look,” Eris said cheerfully, “I’m the Goddess of Discord, not the Goddess of Being an Asshole. And not a word, thigh-baby!”

_Thigh-baby?_ Samael wondered, even as Hermes said, “Right. Being an asshole isn’t her sole purpose in life; it’s just a fun hobby.”

“Hey!”

“ _Children_ ,” Zeus groaned, and while Samael would admit it to no one in this room, she was glad that someone else was taking charge – she certainly didn’t feel capable of it.

Not that there was much need for charge-taking. No sooner had the (thirteen) of them squeezed into the cave than Klotho looked up. “You have returned,” she said simply.

“And you bring with you she who was once the Lost One and is who is now the Planter of the Seed,” Lachesis said.

“And she brings with her the Sword of War. Put it on the pedestal, child,” concluded Atropos.

“S-sword?” Ariadne said, taking a step back, into Dionysus. She wobbled; he steadied her with scarcely a thought.

“The sword you carry is the third harbinger of Armageddon,” Klotho explained. “To put it and its companions in the hands of their Horsemen would be to start Armageddon over again.”

“And should that happen, there is no force, mortal or immortal, that could halt its progress,” Lachesis said.

“The world, as we know it, would end,” Atropos said.

“So place it on the pedestal,” Klotho said, nodding to the third pedestal, the one in the middle, “so that it, and its companions, can be safely disposed of, and the world kept safe.”

Still Ariadne hesitated, and Samael couldn’t understand why. It was just a sword, for—for—Something’s sake! What was a sword compared to the fate of the world?

Although, now that Samael thought of it, if she’d been through what Ariadne had been through – ambushed, violently discorporated, and nearly killed – she wouldn’t be particularly eager to give up _her_ only weapon, either.

Still, there was an easy enough fix. War’s sword was just a standard-issue firmament sword, everyone knew that, the only special thing about it was that it belonged to War. There were thousands of others in Heaven’s armory just like it.

And with the thunder-spear still in her pocket, Samael herself had just a sword that she had no further need of.

So she reached into the pocket dimension that served as her own personal armory and pulled out her standard-issue sword. “Here,” she said, holding it out to Ariadne, blade down.

Ariadne took one look at the sword, yelped, and jumped back—once again, right into Dionysus.

“Samael!” he snapped, putting an arm around Ariadne’s waist and lightly stroking her arm with his other hand.

“Oh for Heav—He— _Somewhere_ ’s sake! It’s a gift, not a threat! I guarantee you, this one will be just as good for self-defense as that one will. Better, even. _I’ve_ been taking care of this one, that one … well, who knows where it’s been?”

“Samael,” and now it was Mephistopheles speaking, “give her a rest. The last time you used that sword anywhere near her, you stabbed her with it.”

“She’d already been discorporated! That doesn’t count!”

Based on the way Dionysus smacked his forehead, the blazing light that shone in Aziraphale’s eyes, and the deep breath Crowley took, that was probably the wrong thing to say.

Except the three of them had no opportunity to vent their spleens on Samael’s head, because Ariadne started to laugh.

It wasn’t the hysterical laugh from before, the one holding onto sanity with the thinnest of threads. But it was a close enough cousin to it that everyone[9] looked at Ariadne in alarm.

She stopped laughing. And then, swallowing, shook her head. “I’m being an idiot, aren’t I?” With a deep breath, she detangled herself from Dionysus, unsheathed the sword, and – giving it a last look that Samael couldn’t hope to read – laid it on the pedestal.

When Ariadne walked back, Samael once again offered her sword to her.

Ariadne blinked at it, expression once again inscrutable – but when she looked up, it was with a smile for Samael. Small and slight, but there all the same. “Thanks—I appreciate it—but, um. Realistically, I’d probably just poke my eye out with that thing. If I’m going to go armed, I think I’ll do better with a super soaker and a flamethrower.”

_What,_ Samael thought, and had no opportunity to think anything further, because the Fates once again had something to say.

“Well done, Planter,” said Lachesis, picking up the thread from her sister as if there hadn’t been an interruption at all. “The three harbingers have been gathered. It is now time for them to be scattered, hidden, so that none may once again pick them up and turn them to destructive use.”

“Scattered? Scattered where?” Ariadne asked.

“That is not for us to divulge,” Atropos said. “For their locations must remain secret, known only to those who deposit them in what will – hopefully – be their final resting places.”

“The more who know a secret, the less likely it is that a secret will remain so,” Klotho added.

Dionysus raised an eyebrow. “So – let me get this straight. The whole point of breaking into Heaven and Hell to steal these—”

Ariadne’s eyes went very wide.

“—other than getting Ari back, of course—”

Ariadne spun and stared at Dionysus.

Dionysus flashed her a quick smile and didn’t skip a beat. “—was to hide them somewhere else? Why don’t we just destroy them?”

“And in whose realm are you planning to do that?” Hades asked.

“The King of the Dead speaks wisely,” Lachesis said. “These are ancient artifacts of great power. To destroy them would take greater power still. And to contain the fallout from such destruction …”

“Would be a fool’s errand,” Atropos concluded.

Dionysus crossed his arms over his chest and snorted.

“It was a good try, kid,” Hermes said, clapping Dionysus on the shoulder. “So the plan is to hide the harbingers and hope Heaven and Hell don’t find them?”

“It is,” Klotho agreed.

“You said that you couldn’t say where they would be hidden, only that the ones doing the hiding could know,” Zeus said. “Are the ones who are to do the hiding in this room?”

Lachesis smiled. It was more than a little frightening to behold. “You tell us, Thunder God.”

Zeus grinned. “I hoped you’d say that. Excuse me, I—”

“ _We_ ,” Hera said, laying a proprietary hand on his arm.

Zeus paused, then he turned to his wife and nodded once. “Right. We need to make a few calls.”

And out they went, already whispering to each other as Zeus dug his phone from his pocket.

“Right,” Hermes muttered. “Better get these packed up then.” He lazily snapped his fingers.

The sword, scales, and crown disappeared from the pedestals. In their places sat three cardboard boxes sealed with packing tape, identical in every way.

“And just to make assurance doubly sure,” Hermes murmured. He snapped his fingers again, and as Samael watched, the boxes floated a few inches above the pedestals and began to move, shuffling above and around each other like a shell game. Samael could only look at them a few seconds before she grew dizzy. Glancing around the room, she didn’t seem to be the only so afflicted.

Finally the shell game ceased, and the three boxes fell into Hermes’s waiting arms. “Well, if you all will excuse me, I assume I’ll be having some deliveries to make.” He moved to leave the cave, but stopped, catching Dionysus’s eye. “You ok now, kid?”

Dionysus didn’t answer, at least not in words. But he did put an arm around Ariadne, and he did smile.

“Good,” Hermes said, a smile flickering across his own face. “And, Ari?”

Ariadne had been staring up at Dionysus in something like confusion and something like wonder; it was with an effort she looked away from him and to Hermes. “Yes?”

“You take care of yourself, you hear? Because if something happens to you …” Hermes trailed off, looking again at Dionysus. “Well for starters, you can forget all the king’s horses and all the king’s men – because if something happens to you, even _I_ won’t be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”

Ariadne’s jaw fell, and she stared up at Dionysus. He shrugged.

She didn’t say anything—but she did wrap an arm around his waist and practically burrow into him.

And strangely enough, that seemed to be all that needed to be said or done. The Fates had already gone back to their spinning/measuring/cutting, content to ignore them. So they wandered back out of the cave, and Samael wondered if she was the only one thinking, _So, now what?_

Ariadne was the first to give voice to the thought. “So …”

Absolutely everyone turned to look at her. Somehow Samael was not surprised when she clammed up.

But not for long. Ariadne looked up at Dionysus, then over to Crowley and Aziraphale, then to Samael and Mephistopheles, and finally to the assembled gods and goddesses – even to Zeus, Hera, and Hermes, standing a little way off, all three on their phones with the boxes piled between them.

“What exactly happened while I was gone?” she asked in the tone of a woman who was afraid she would regret it.

Aziraphale and Crowley exchanged glances. Samael did the same with Mephistopheles, and she was relieved by what she saw – _Nope, we’re not telling her, we’ll leave that to her parents and her boyfriend_. She could only imagine that the remaining gods were doing the same thing.

She was wrong.

“Oooh, Ari!” Eris squealed. She grabbed Ariadne’s hand and tugged her forward. “I thought you’d never ask. Come on, let’s go back to my place – I’ve got it all on tape!” 

* * *

[1] Gigantic Hole in the Wall.

[2] Ariadne had learned the hard way that flying in the Underworld was not to be attempted. The complete lack of wind shifted the aerodynamics to the point where Ariadne was lucky to get high enough in the air to fall to the ground in a painful heap.

[3] Or possibly drunk.

[4] Except the Fates.

[5] And _why_ did Ariadne have a scabbard? Did discorporation come with a free sword?

[6] Crowley, had his opinion been consulted, would not have had had a problem with coming along, though he might have requested a bit of warning so that the dragging was not quite as literal.

[7] Not that Crowley had personal experience with this kind of thing.

[8] Which was entirely theoretical.

[9] Except the Fates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope that was as sappy as promised. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave a comment/hit me up on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/) if you want to chat more!


	31. Such a Tired Game

Ariadne sat in front of a bank of flickering TV screens and let her jaw hang open.

What she was seeing—if it wasn’t on tape, she wasn’t sure she would have believed it. It was on tape, and she _still_ wasn’t sure she believed it. Not just what they’d done – cutting down demons and angels by the dozens, blowing up large portions of Heaven and Hell, turning a Duke of Hell into a pastry and feeding him to hellhounds, _throwing Satan himself into a lake of fire_ , sneaking through air return vents and traveling to Heaven via cell phone waves, _punching out an archangel and dousing him with worms_ , rescuing demons, growing a forest in Heaven, _punching a hole through the wall of Heaven itself_ —

But that they’d done it, not just to keep Armageddon 2.0 from becoming a reality, but for her. To get her back.

And it wasn’t just Dionysus – who, yes, she could see him punching his way through a few realms if he was told that’s what it would take to get her back; impulse control was not his strong suit – or even her parents, who had only ever given her up to keep her safe. But the gods. Maybe she could explain Hermes and Eris – Hermes looked out for Dionysus, always, and Eris would do just about anything for a round of tabletop. And fine, Persephone was her friend, and even if Hades wasn’t wrapped around Persephone’s finger, he’d see the wisdom in being campaign master if only so he could do damage control. But Athena? Zeus? _Hera_?!

And then there were Samael and Mephistopheles! She didn’t even know them! The last time they’d met – before the alley – she had blown them up! And yet they—they—

What had _any_ of them been thinking?

The only thread of sanity she could cling to was the knowledge that it wasn’t, couldn’t, have been all about her. Or really much about her at all. Ariadne could remember things like _“You’re dead meat. You’re bloody history,_ ” and “ _You pathetic excuse for an angel_ ” and tell herself that really, she was just a convenient excuse for a bit of cathartic destruction.

But then. Then Crowley would do something like shout, “ _I did it to keep her away from you!_ ” right before he pushed literal Satan into a lake of fire. Or Aziraphale would punch an archangel and demand “ _Why?!_ ” in a way that made it clear he was asking more about what that archangel had done to her than what had been done to him. And then, the remains of sanity were much harder to cling to.

_I am not worth this,_ Ariadne thought, not for the first time, as Dionysus turned into a leopard and launched himself at the archangel who’d thought it a good idea to bring up how Ariadne’s attempt to kick him in the nuts hadn’t gone as well as hoped.

But this time, a second thought answered the first.

_Then you need to_ become _worth this._

And that was—well.

That was a thought.

“Ari?” Dionysus murmured.

Ariadne jumped and stared at him. “Y-yeah?”

His eyebrows arched. “You ok?” he murmured. He drew a finger slowly down her arm, and oh, that felt good, grounding in a way she couldn’t begin to describe. “You look like you left us for a minute there.”

“Do you need me to rewind?” Eris said. “Because I can totally rewind. I could watch Dionysus rip that asshole to shreds _all day_.”

She probably could. Ariadne, on the other hand … “I’m ok, thanks.”

“Well, if you insist—oh, this part is good, too! The look on his _face_ when the apple hits him!” And Eris hugged her bowl of popcorn to herself and merrily munched away.

Ariadne, on the other hand …

“You’re usually not squeamish,” Dionysus murmured, this time low enough that nobody heard – or those who did were too polite to interrupt.

Ariadne shrugged. “It’s different when it’s makeup and fake blood and injuries added in post. As opposed to …”

She glanced at Aziraphale, who seemed to sense her regard and smiled at her. He must have changed his jacket or fixed it, since Ariadne couldn’t see a hole in it. And then she looked back at Dionysus, though not at his face.

“How’s your leg?” she asked.

“Huh? Oh! Gaia healed it,” Dionysus said. He bumped shoulders with her and nodded to the screens. “Watch—after the apple forest starts to grow—”

_Apple?_ Ariadne thought.

She stared at the screen, even though she couldn’t have told anyone what she was seeing there.

_Gaia?_

And she looked down at her rucksack.

There was a final plea from what was left of her sanity, begging her not to fling herself off this cliff, telling her that all that lay at the bottom were sharp rocks and madness. Pointing out that she didn’t have time for a breakdown. But the rest of her could only sigh with resignation, because there was only one way for the work to get done and there was no turning back now.

So Ariadne took a deep breath and jumped, praying her wings would be enough to slow her fall.

“ _Ehyeh asher ehyeh_ ,” she said, and turned to the angels and the demons.

She was going to ask, _Does this mean anything to you?_ but she didn’t have to. Samael jumped and snapped to attention; Mephistopheles yelped and nearly fell off his chair. Crowley’s sprawl turned into a mess of flailing limbs. And Aziraphale sat up straighter (if that were possible), whirled toward her, and whispered, “Where—where did you hear that?”

“What does it mean?” Ariadne asked instead answering.

“It—well, my dear, there are many potential translations, but in English—”

“It’s _Her_ ,” Samael said, voice breaking, and if there was any doubt in Ariadne’s mind as to who _Her_ was, Mephistopheles pointing insistently upward resolved it.

“Yep. That’s,” Ariadne stammered, “that’s what I was afraid of.”

“Ari?” Dionysus asked, reaching for her.

But she couldn’t let him grab her; she had to get up, had to _move_. And so she did, pacing around the wide room and ignoring how everyone in it – not just Dionysus, not just her parents, not just Samael and Mephistopheles, but Eris and Athena and Persephone and even Hades – was looking at her like she’d lost her mind.

They might not be wrong, but she didn’t have time for that.

“Gaia,” Ariadne said, “Gaia—she—she was in Eden—”

“ _What_?” Athena gasped.

Ariadne ignored her. “But she—she didn’t tell me who she was, not at first. Instead that’s what she said. At first. _Ehyeh asher ehyeh_.”

Crowley’s jaw nearly hit his lap. “Oh, fuck.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Ariadne agreed.

“She could have been lying,” Dionysus said. He was leaning forward, his eyes following every turn and pass she made. “About some of it. About any of it. Ari, you don’t know—”

Ariadne shook her head. “She said she wouldn’t lie. That she might not tell me the whole truth, but that she wouldn’t lie.”

“Ari—”

“And Aster—Asterion trusts her,” Ariadne said, voice breaking over the name.

Aziraphale gasped, and Dionysus’s face went blank before he said, “What.”

“He was there,” Ariadne replied, and yes, her voice was thick, and yes, there was a lump in her throat, and yes, her eyes were welling up, but she didn’t have time for any of that, and so she ignored it all. “He was there the whole time. Since he—since Theseus—Gaia brought him there. To Eden. And he’s _happy_.”

“Who’s Asterion?” Mephistopheles asked, in tones that suggested he was already regretting it.

“Her brother,” Crowley said, but how did he—oh, Aziraphale must have told him; good, one less thing for Ariadne to have to explain.

“ _What_?” Samael yelped.

Crowley winced. “Adoptive!”

“Oh.”

“But,” Athena stammered, “how would Gaia gain entry to Eden? And if she is,” Athena too pointed up, “how is— _how_?”

“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’” Dionysus whispered.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ariadne replied, nodding vigorously. “And she said—she said she was known by different names everywhere.”

Athena went a few shades paler than was good for her. “I think,” she said slowly, “that I need to sit down,” and did so.

She was not the only one who looked in need of a seat, or a sturdier one. Samael and Mephistopheles, Crowley and Aziraphale, Dionysus and Eris – all were staring at Ariadne in their own particular flavor of shellshocked, bewildered or existentially terrified.

Except Hades and Persephone. They were looking at Ariadne, or at least, they were after first looking at each other. But while they looked serious, even grim, they did not seem surprised.

So they knew more than they were telling. Well, they would if anyone did.

But Ariadne could deal with all of that later. She started pacing again.

So Gaia was the Abrahamics’ Lord or Yahweh or Jehovah or Allah or whatever He/She/They were calling themselves nowadays, and a number of other deities besides, and—and knowing that was getting her _nowhere_ , not really. Well, it might gain her a few allies for whatever ridiculous thing she was about to try. Ariadne was easy to dismiss, to leave out to dry, Gaia less so.

Gaia wanted all the angels and demons to make up and get along, or at least learn to coexist, and more than that, she wanted them to have the freedom to make choices for themselves. And to get that freedom, they had to eat the apples of the Tree of Knowledge. So far, so good—but _how_? How to convince millions of angels and millions of demons that what they really needed was a snack?

Would just telling them that their Lord wanted it be enough? No—surely if that was all it would take, Gaia would have done it already. And half of the people Ariadne had to convince were defined by their resistance to doing what Gaia wanted.

Besides, if the only reason the angels and the demons partook was because of an order from on high, it would defeat the purpose of the exercise. They had to _choose_ it, not have it chosen for them.

Ariadne just needed to give them a reason …

She glanced at the flickering screens, watched a forest of apple trees grow in what had been a sterile headquarters. A car dealership without the cars. She thought of the angels she’d seen there when she played Aziraphale’s role in Heaven, how some had seemed gung-ho and ready to fight, but most had been scared, confused, _trapped_ …

And then she thought of three demons chained to posts and another demon in a ringmaster’s cloak cackling about a _“right good plucking”_ in a way that made Ariadne want to fold her wings tightly to herself, and they weren’t even manifested.

… Did Ariadne need to give them a reason? Or did she just need to give them an option?

“About,” Ariadne asked, testing the thought out as she voiced it, “about how popular is the leadership of Heaven and Hell?”

She didn’t look at her parents. They’d spent so much time on Earth and had embraced their free will so long ago that their perspectives wouldn’t be useful. Samael and Mephistopheles, on the other hand …

Samael blinked like she’d never considered the question. Mephistopheles laughed.

“Popular?” he asked. “They’re not—at least in Hell—nobody _likes_ the lower-downs; we just …”

“You try anything against them, you’re plucked. If you’re lucky,” Crowley finished.

“And Heaven?” Ariadne asked, glancing between Samael and Aziraphale, although she wasn’t sure how useful an answer she’d get out of either of them.

“It’s not—it’s not _about_ popularity,” Samael said. “We’re angels. We obey.”

“You didn’t,” Ariadne pointed out. “Never mind the apple. If you couldn’t disobey, I wouldn’t be here.”

Samael snorted. “Please. That was a rogue operation. If anything, I should have turned Gabriel and Sandalphon over to Michael, not tried to thwart them myself.”

There were a hundred things Ariadne could have said in reply to that, from _See? You don’t even like Heaven’s leadership, and you’re part of it!_ to _If Heaven can have a “rogue” operation, then you angels have a lot more free will than you’re giving yourself credit for._ But she didn’t say them. Because they wouldn’t help her find out what they needed to know. Instead she asked, “Why did they want me dead in the first place?”

“Gabriel and Sandalphon?” Samael sighed. “You’re, er. Having you around – especially after the Apocalypse debacle – wasn’t exactly good for morale. Angels were, er …”

“The angels on the train,” Dionysus suddenly said, eyes widening. “The ones we saw getting gaslit in Heaven. They—they were on the train because they wanted to know about Ari, weren’t they? You remember how they reacted when I asked about hatching?”

Aziraphale sucked in a breath, and Samael reluctantly nodded.

“And the demons in the airport!” Eris gasped. “I thought they thought I really was Lucy! But they—I was a redhead, and it looked like I was with those two!” She pointed to Crowley and Aziraphale. “They must have thought I was _you_!”

So just by existing, Ariadne was getting angels and demons to make choices that management didn’t agree with. If she actually exerted what powers of persuasion she had—but that would be an uphill climb, especially since management was likely to tighten the screws now that her parents and Dionysus and Samael and Mephistopheles had humiliated them so utterly—

_… Wait._

Ariadne looked at the screens again.

The leadership of Heaven and Hell had not acquitted themselves well. Multiple times over. First when her parents and Adam Young had canceled the Apocalypse. Second – at least in theory – when her parents had wriggled out of whatever punishment Heaven and Hell had attempted for them. And third, when they’d had valuable artifacts stolen right from under their noses by a collection of five people, who also managed to cause massive collateral damage to Heaven and Hell _and_ personally make the leadership look like fools. Dead fools, in some cases.

Of course they’d try to lie about it. Do damage control. Or else they’d have a mutiny on their hands.

So why not make it impossible for them to control the damage? After all, Ariadne had evidence of their humiliation on tape. And …

Her eyes darted toward the rucksack on the floor.

Yes. _Yes._ Show the angels and demons the truth, let them draw their own conclusions about what they were seeing. And at the end, offer them a way out. _You don’t have to live like this; you can be your own person; and all you have to do is eat an apple._

Of course there were holes in the plan. Not everyone would be convinced. She had no idea _how_ she’d get this video in front of the people who needed to see it. And she’d have to appear on camera, which she usually tried to avoid – but this whole thing wouldn’t work without her as the figurehead.

Still. Those were hurdles to jump, not brick walls in her path. With a bit more thought and planning, she could find a way over or around them. And—

“Yoo-hoo! Ari! Earth to Ari!” That was Eris, shouting her name and waving. “Hello? You still there?”

Ariadne jumped. “S-s-sorry, I got—” She shook her head; the English language didn’t have a word to describe what she was. “I just figured out what I have to do.”

“Do?” asked Dionysus, and by the way he sat up and breathed deeply, Ariadne could tell he didn’t like the idea of her _having_ to _do_ anything.

Hopefully she could explain. And hopefully he’d learn to live with it. “Yeah—I—look, I’ll explain in a bit, just—just trust me a few more minutes? Please?”

Dionysus took a deep breath—

“Gaia helped you,” Ariadne pointed out ruthlessly. “And she helped me. Now I need to help her.”

Dionysus blinked—and swallowed. And nodded.

“Great! Eris? Would you—do you happen to have these tapes in digital form?”

Eris raised an eyebrow. “Honey, it’s the twenty-first century. Of _course_ they’re digital.”

“Fantastic. Can I have a copy of them?”

“Sure, I was going to—”

“Great. Thank you. No, really, _thank you_. And—” Ariadne closed her eyes and rubbed her temple. “I need a computer with video editing software.”

“Like your laptop?” Dionysus asked.

“Yeah—”

“We have it,” Hades said. When Ariadne stared at him, he said, “When they were adventuring, I sent Thanatos and Hypnos to the Ritz to fetch your things and Dionysus’s. It seemed to me unlikely that you would be going back there.”

“Oh. Well. That makes things easier. Thank— _thank_ you.” Ariadne took a deep breath. “I really can’t thank any of you enough.”

“Ari—” Dionysus said before anyone else could say anything.

Ariadne shook her head. “No. No, don’t—don’t say what I think you’re going to say. Because I _can’t_ thank you enough. Especially since …”

She looked at the televisions again. “Especially since I think—I think I know how to save the galaxy without blowing up any Death Stars. And I think I can get Heaven and Hell off our backs. But I …”

She worried her lower lip and looked at all of them again – every last one of them, gods and angels and demons. “I can’t do this alone. I’m sorry. But I’m going to need some help. So …”

She took a deep breath. “Are you in?”

* * *

Ariadne’s plan was, of course, insane. But in Dionysus’s judgement, it was a _good_ insane. “Just crazy enough to work” rather than “completely and utterly batshit.” And he had not become the God of Hollywood without developing a healthy appreciation for “just crazy enough to work.”

And yes, there had been a few holes in the initial plan, but Ariadne had pitched it in a room full of intelligent people. Athena had almost immediately had a great idea to fill some of the more obvious holes, and Persephone had gotten the entire cross-pantheon agricultural deities group chat to help to put it into practice.[1] There were still some hurdles, namely how they were going to get the video in front of the people who needed to see it, but … baby steps.

And he and Ariadne had a video to create.

Retreating with her to Eris’s dining room to set up the laptop and start going over the footage had felt good in a way Dionysus couldn’t describe. It was the culmination of what they’d done for millennia. Dionysus, starring, directing, shooting. Ariadne, stage-managing, producing, editing. Now she’d have to get in front of the camera instead of remaining comfortably behind it, write the script instead of doctor it, but she could do it. He had faith in her.

Even having to drag Samael, Mephistopheles, Crowley, and Aziraphale along for the ride – because the second Dionysus and Ariadne had looked at the footage _as footage_ , they’d realized they’d have to CSI-edit[2] the thing to death in order to get anything useable out of it – hadn’t been enough to spoil Dionysus’s good mood. Even Hermes knocking on the door and asking if he could borrow Dionysus for a few minutes hadn’t been enough to spoil the mood.

Walking with Hermes back to the game room and seeing Zeus and Hera sitting there – along with everyone else – _did_ spoil the mood.

To the point where Dionysus turned around and walked right back out, stayed only by Hermes’s hand clamped like a vise around his shoulder. “Not so fast, kid.”

“No,” Dionysus said.

“We want to help, Dionysus,” Hera said. “That’s all we wanted to talk to you about. Helping.”

“ _Without_ Ariadne? This is her show,” Dionysus shot back.

Hera looked confused, squinting around Dionysus and Hermes before turning back to Hermes. “Where’s Ariadne?”

“Still editing. And that was my idea. In, kid.” Hermes didn’t leave Dionysus much choice in the matter, dragging him inside and closing the door behind him. “Some things need to be … oh, _hello_.”

His gaze had fallen on the rucksack, still filled with apples – apparently Persephone hadn’t finished with the group chat yet. Hermes snatched up an apple and lifted it above his head, eyebrows arched above his head.

“As I was saying – some things need to be kept in the family, owing to the _gravity_ of the situation.”

Hermes let go of the apple and let it fall to the floor. “If you see what I mean?”

_Oh. OH._ Dionysus did. But then again …

“Ariadne is not the one who …” He let his gaze slip sidelong to Hera and raised an eyebrow at Hermes. “Let me put it like this. Ariadne is not the one whose equal and opposite _reaction_ I’d worry about.”

“Pfft,” Hermes threw himself into one of the chairs around the gaming table. “After all this time? That reaction would have to overcome a lot of _inertia_.”

“What,” asked Athena, watching the two of them narrowly, “are you two on about?”

“Nothing,” Dionysus and Hermes said in unison, and Dionysus – realizing there was no way he was getting out of this one – took one of the few remaining seats at the gaming table.

“So!” Hermes said. “Let’s get to the point, shall we? Dionysus, your lovely lady has a lovely plan, but it has a lovely hole, mainly, getting your propaganda video into the hands of ten million angels and ten million demons.”

“Actually, Mephistopheles already figured out how we were going to get it into the angels’ hands,” Dionysus replied.

Athena sat up straighter and looked smug. Eris rolled her eyes.

“But,” Hermes said, “you haven’t figured out Hell yet.”

Dionysus stiffened—and sighed. “Not yet.”

“Good. I have,” said Hermes.

“What,” said Dionysus.

“What?” asked Zeus.

“Whaaat?” asked Eris.

“But it’s going to take some, ah, _calculation_ ,” Hermes said, waggling his eyebrows at Dionysus, as if Dionysus hadn’t gotten the message three times over already. “And some misdirection. I think this video will land better if the leadership of Heaven and Hell is distracted when it drops, Pater.”

“And you bring this problem to me because …?” Zeus asked.

“Because _you_ can pull the strings and call an inter-pantheon diplomatic summit on some convenient non-Earth plane, and I can’t,” Hermes said. “And we’re due for one anyway. The only reason we haven’t called Heaven and Hell onto the carpet for what they did yet was because we wanted to be sure we had the upper hand first.”

“And how has that changed?” Zeus asked, folding his hands in front of him and cocking his head in mute inquiry.

Hermes blinked. “I’m sorry, am I the only one who remembers this kid punching a hole through Heaven? And killing an archangel?”

“That only answers half the question. Hell—”

“Father,” Athena interrupted. “We can claim the upper hand over Hell, too. Samael and Crowley may have done most of the damage – but they were armed with weapons of our devising.”

“My Wabbajack knocked Satan into a lake of fire,” Eris said. “I mean, I don’t know what any of you would do in my shoes, but me? I’m gonna take partial credit for that until the heat death of the universe.”

Athena nodded once and spread her hands, as if to say, _See?_

“And we can claim that Aziraphale, Crowley, Mephistopheles and Samael are under our protection – to say nothing of Ariadne,” Hera said. “We certainly have the standing to call a summit. Heaven and Hell will not like it, but the other pantheons should defer to our leadership.”

“So we call the summit and you guys drop the video while the leadership’s distracted,” Hermes said. “And with luck, there’s a mass stampede of angels and demons heading for the Trees Persephone and her friends will be planting.”

“But that doesn’t explain how the video will get into Hell’s hands,” Dionysus pointed out.

“I’m getting to that. So, as pretty much everyone in this room knows – or, well, some of us know – Hell communicates with their agents via mortal electronics. Now, I might be crazy, but it seems to me that the easiest way to get the video down to Hell is to just reverse that connection.”

“Except you’ve been trying to do that for years and have failed. Repeatedly,” Athena pointed out.

“Right, their security against other divine interference is pretty airtight. _Mortal_ interference, however …?”

“And how exactly is a mortal going to manage that?” Eris asked. “Most of them have the magical capability of a teaspoon.”

“But not all. A mortal, with, say, some divine ancestry and a, let’s say, _gift_ for electronics could certainly manage it. If he had the right guidance.”

Dionysus’s eyes went wide as the pieces clicked into place. And if he had any doubt, it was cleared by the way Hermes turned to him. “Wouldn’t you say so, kid?”

“Oh. Oh yes. I would,” Dionysus said.

“Fantastic. And wouldn’t you …” Hermes waved vaguely. “Say so?”

“Oh no. This one’s yours,” Dionysus replied.

Hermes blinked. For the first time, he looked unsure. “You—you mean that?”

“I said you could take the credit. I have no intention of going back on my word.”

Hermes hesitated, watching Dionysus’s face closely. But finally, with a sigh, he fished a folder out of the pocket of his jacket and threw them on the table. “Newton Pulsifer – remember him, one of the mortals at the airbase? – is a direct male-line descendent of Zeus.”

Zeus’s eyes went wide, and the color drained from his face. “Pulsifer,” he breathed.

“ _What_?” Hera gasped.

“Zeus had that affair over four hundred years ago; we are _well_ past the statute of limitations, Hera,” Hermes said in a sort of tone that would brook no argument. Yet when Hera glared at him, he backtracked. “I mean, shout at Pater however much you want – er, _later_ , please – just leave the mortal out of it. We need him alive and in one piece, all right?”

“And he’s already passed his test of heroism,” Dionysus added. “ _He’s_ the one who stopped the bombs from falling.”

Every single person at the table – except Hermes – turned to Dionysus in shock. “How?” Athena asked.

“And how do you know that?” Zeus demanded.

“Like Hermes said – he has a gift for electronics,” Dionysus said to Athena. “Absolutely no control over it, though, so he’s going to need help if we want to use him to hack into Hell’s mainframe. Er. Metaphorically speaking. As for how I know …”

Now Dionysus turned to Zeus, and he couldn’t help his smirk. “Easy. He told me.”

Zeus’s eyebrows went up. “Did he now.”

“He told me a lot of other things too,” Dionysus said, carefully nonchalant. “Basically how everything went down at that airfield.”

“You will share those things. With all of us. Before the summit,” Zeus ordered.

And Dionysus hesitated. That—that was supposed to be his get-himself-and-Ari-out-of-jail free card. Except Zeus did not seem like he was in the mood to bargain.

And right now, Dionysus needed Zeus to cooperate, because otherwise … Ariadne’s plan might not get off the ground.

Still, he glanced at Hermes, wondering if Hermes might have a trick or five up his sleeve to help Dionysus wriggle his way out of this.

But Hermes was smiling. And he gave a slow, infinitesimal nod.

Well. That answered that. Dionysus would have to think of another get-out-of-jail-free card. Maybe it wouldn’t be as hard as he was afraid it would be. As Hermes had pointed out – multiple times – he had punched a hole through Heaven.

So Dionysus leaned forward, hands clasped together on the table, and raised an eyebrow at Zeus. “Certainly, Father. Is now a good time?”

* * *

Eris pulled her motorcycle over in front of Jasmine Cottage, took her helmet off, and for a moment, just … sat there.

It felt _weird_ , coming back here. Like she’d taken a long journey and found herself back at the beginning again. Which was ridiculous. She’d only gone to London (where she’d been heaps of times) and the Underworld (where she _lived_ when she wasn’t wreaking havoc in the mortal world). And sure, there’d been a particularly invigorating tabletop campaign in the middle there, but it wasn’t like Eris hadn’t played good rounds of tabletop before. She had. _Better_ ones, even.

She just couldn’t remember the last time she had played a round that had felt quite … so … _personal_.

“This the place?” said a voice from behind her. Eris turned. Hermes had leaned out the window of the rental car and was raising an eyebrow at her.

“Yep.”

“Great. You sit tight, Aunt Hestia; I’ll get the baklava.”

Eris peeled off her driving gloves and made no move to help Hermes with the baklava or Hestia to get out of the car – although the latter didn’t need help, since she’d already emerged and was smoothing her skirt and adjusting her blouse.

“What a lovely cottage!” she said, and because she was Hestia, meant it.

With that out of the way, Eris led the way up the walk and to the door. She ignored the bell and knocked instead – a brisk shave-and-a-haircut with a half-second pause before the two-bits.

Aunt Hestia must have been having an influence, because the door _didn’t_ open just as Eris was starting the two-bits bit.

Or maybe she wasn’t. Maybe Anathema and Newt just weren’t home. Come to think of it, Eris hadn’t noticed the bike – or the ridiculous Reliant Robin – and wouldn’t _that_ be awkward, sitting here, cooling their heels for Gaia-knew-how-long until—

The door opened. Unfortunately, it was Anathema doing the opening. “Hello? Can I—Eris?”

Fortunately, Newt was just a few steps behind Anathema, so Eris could do what she’d wanted to do ever since she’d twisted enough arms to be invited along on this little excursion. She threw her arms open, squealed at a pitch just shy of breaking glass, and shouted, “Newt! Nephew!”

“What?” yelped Newt.

“What?” gasped Anathema.

“ _Why_?” groaned Hermes.

Eris ignored all of them, skipping into the house to pinch Newt’s cheeks. He took a hurried step back. “And aren’t you adorable! It’s been _so long_ since I got a new niece or nephew to corrupt!”

Newt continued to beat a hurried, backwards retreat; Eris followed because she could. “What in the name of all that is good and holy,” asked Anathema, “is going on?”

“Ignore my sister,” Hermes sighed. “She knows exactly what she’s doing, and reacting will only encourage her. Hi,” he added. “I’m Hermes, Messenger of the Gods and the God of Heralds, Travelers, Thieves, Merchants, and Orators. This Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth, Domesticity, the Home, and the State. Unfortunately for you, you already know Eris. And we need to talk to Newt.”

“ _Why_?” asked Newt, looking wildly between Eris – still grinning like a madwoman – Hermes, Hestia, and Anathema.

“Because it’s not every day we get to welcome a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Zeus into the fold,” Hestia said. She lightly took the baklava from Hermes and held it out. “Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but … may we come in? This will be much easier to discuss seated somewhere comfortable, and, well, I _did_ bring baklava for you all to enjoy.”

Anathema simply stared at the proffered pan with her jaw fallen.

Eris coughed and stage whispered. “You should probably let her in … sacred hospitality is kinda her _thing_ , you know …”

“Eris,” Hestia reproved, giving her a _look_ that wasn’t quite as deadly as Zeus’s looks, but which was worse – because it was the kind of look that said, _Come now, I know you can do better than that_. It wasn’t angry, just _disappointed_.

Eris cringed.

But Anathema seemed to be shaken out of her stupor. “You know what? Sure. Why the heck not. Come on in.” And she opened the door all the way.

The five of them headed to the kitchen, because that was where most civilized people went when food was being offered, although not before Hestia stopped in the threshold, made a complicated gesture, and murmured a few words in Greek. Eris felt it like an ice cube dropped down her spine – what with Hestia being the Goddess of the Right Order of This, That, and the Other Thing and Eris being Goddess of Discord, their energies were about as opposite as one could get in the Greek pantheon – and she wasn’t the only one. Anathema whirled around. “What—what was—what did you—”

“Just a blessing, dear,” Hestia said, “did it bother you?”

The witch slowly shook her head. “Here—um—I’ll get plates. And forks. And a spatula.”

“Here, let me help,” Hestia said, and even though she hadn’t set foot in this house ever, she was able to help, grabbing the forks and the plates to pass over to Anathema. “Shall I put the kettle on?”

“… Sure,” Anathema said, and Eris mentally left the two of them to it, slipping into the seat next to the one Newt had thumped into.

“Hi, nephew,” she said, grinning like a loon.

Newt edged his chair away slightly, probably laboring under the misapprehension that he was being subtle.

Hermes sighed heavily and ran a hand over his face. “Seriously, ignore her,” he said, “she’s just trying to get a rise out of you.” He then narrowed his eyes. “You—you _really_ do look like our half-brother Adultery. It’s … well, it’s scary, but it does explain a lot.”

“Ad-adultery?” Newt asked.

“Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer?” Anathema asked, approaching the table with plates laden with baklava. Hestia was right behind her with five mugs. Eris didn’t even have to look in the mugs to know that when hers landed in front of her, it would already be prepared just the way she liked it.

“He was a son of _Zeus_?” Anathema continued, handing out the plates before taking a seat on Newt’s other side. “But—but— _how_?”

Hermes took his mug and his plate with a rueful grin. “Well, luckily for the sanity of everyone at this table, there were no animal transformations or husbandly impersonations or fu—” Hermes glanced sidelong at Hestia and clearly thought better of that adjective. “That is—rather weird manifestations involved. From what I remember, Pater got bored, found a similarly bored Puritan housewife, and … did his thing.”

“But that was the sixteen hundreds,” Anathema said. “Are you telling me that—that in the sixteen hundreds, _Zeus_ was still running around—”

“Being himself?” Hermes asked, raising an ironic eyebrow. “Anathema—you mind if I call you Anathema? No? Great—Anathema, if you and our nephew,” he tipped his mug at Newt, “hadn’t intervened with all those bombs a few weeks back, Pater would _still_ be … being himself, except with the cockroaches.”

“Mother’s got him on a pretty tight leash these days,” Eris pointed out.

“You think that would have survived the end of the world as we know it?” Hermes asked.

“Do you _really_ want an answer to that?”

“Dears, I hate to interrupt, but I don’t think any of us wants an answer to that,” Hestia said gently. “And I for one am _very_ grateful that we didn’t have to find out – thanks in no small part to _you_ , Newt, Anathema.” She reached out and—yep, that was Anathema’s hand she was patting, and she might have patted Newt’s too, except he was grasping his mug with both hands and clutching it to him like a security blanket.

Anathema stared at the patting hand, then at Hestia, then at Newt, as if Newt could possibly have a better idea of what was going on here than she could.

“And if you’re wondering why we keep harping on that,” Hermes asked, “it’s because we need you to repeat the trick. Sort of.”

Newt sat up so fast that his tea threatened to slosh over his mug. Threatened, but didn’t actually do it. No tea prepared by Hestia would dare to misbehave so. “Wait. Wait. _What_? But we—but we _already_ saved the world—”

“Well, that’s the thing with the world,” Eris replied, “It keeps needing saving, in no small part because, you know, you _stopped_ the nukes. Instead of redirecting them toward, say—”

“Eris,” Hestia interrupted. “Newton is quite talented, but I think directing nuclear weapons off-plane is a bit beyond his abilities.”

“ _Talented_?” Newt guffawed, and if Eris was in any way a nice person, she might have felt bad for him. In fact, she wasn’t a nice person, and she _still_ felt bad for him. “Did—did Dionysus—”

“Yeah, he’s the one who spilled the beans. From what I can tell, he figured out what you were about five minutes after meeting you,” Hermes said.

“Where is Dionysus?” asked Anathema. “And Ariadne? And Crowley and Aziraphale?”

“Underworld,” Eris replied.

“Still? I would have thought they would have headed to LA,” Anathema said.

Eris opened her mouth.

Eris closed her mouth.

Eris looked around the table, but neither Hestia nor Hermes looked to be in a mood to help her out.

“Yeah,” she said finally, “yeah, that was the plan, but uh … stuff happened. Lots and lots of stuff. But don’t worry. They’re all fine now. Nobody’s even dead! Well, not anyone we like. Anymore.”

“ _What_?!”

“And we can explain all of that in good time,” Hestia said, laying her hand over one of Anathema’s. Anathema stared at that hand like she thought she ought to shake it off, but couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. Eris sympathized; Hestia had that effect on people. “But right now, we do need to focus on the task at hand.”

“And—and that is?” Newt asked.

“Eating baklava, drinking tea, and convincing you to save the world. Again,” Hermes said, counting off the tasks on his fingers. “Speaking of which, eat your damn baklava; Aunt Hestia worked hard on this.”

Eris used to think that Dionysus was the only one Hermes could order around like that. It turned out that he must have had that effect on all of Zeus’s little messes – and their significant others – because Anathema and Newt actually started eating. Anathema’s eyes even wide as she tasted her first forkful. “This,” she said after she’d swallowed, “this is—”

“Amazing? Delicious? Divine?” Eris asked, attacking her own baklava. “They’re all good adjectives. Just don’t say heavenly. Because that would be an insult to the baked goods.”

Anathema wrinkled her nose. “What?”

“You ever seen Heaven? Trick question, of course you haven’t. But imagine, if you will, the worst possible iteration of the open office, turned up to eleven; an all-white aesthetic; and – if the thigh-baby is to be believed – an A/C system that’s permanently set to ‘just above temperatures that will cause actual hypothermia,’ and you’ll have a pretty accurate picture.”

“No—no St. Peter?” Newt asked, stumbling over the words. “Or pearly gates? Or—or angels on clouds with harps?”

“Clouds, maybe, harps, no,” Hermes replied. “Hate to break it to you, but despite Heaven being one of the more crowded afterlives … it’s pretty soulless.”

“But don’t worry,” Eris said, patting Newt on the back. “We’ve got Heaven covered. It’s Hell we need you to help us stick it to.”

Newt sucked in a gasp, and with it, a mouthful of baklava that he immediately started choking on.

“ _Eris_!” Hermes snapped. And then he snapped again, only this time it was his fingers, and Newt could breathe again. “Could you please refrain from murdering the mortals?”

“Awww, you’re no fun.”

“Eris,” Hestia said, and Eris began to pout – because, well, when Hestia said your name in that tone, you really had little choice but to start behaving.

… For a given value of behaving.

“You,” Newt, even though his airways and voice box were clear of assorted baklava-adjacent bits, couldn’t stop stammering, “you want—you want us—to help you take on _Hell_?”

“Yep,” Hermes replied.

Newt’s gaze volleyed among all three gods and his girlfriend. His girlfriend’s gaze made a similar circuit, though with less panic and more intrigue. “ _How_?”

“Same way you saved the world the first time. Be in the right place at the right time and push a few buttons. Only this time, instead of your gift going haywire and breaking everything … you’re going to control it, and make it do what you want,” Hermes replied.

Newt blinked slowly. “I—sorry, I have to ask again. _How_? I don’t—I don’t _have_ a gift; I just break everything that I touch.”

“That’s not quite true, Newton,” Hestia said gently. “You’re a descendent of Zeus. The thunder god. And—”

“ _Electricity_ ,” Anathema gasped.

“Very good!” Hestia beamed. “Yes, that’s your gift, Newton dear. Electricity manipulation. And—well, unfortunately, given your er, passion for the subject, and lack of control …”

“When you get excited, anything more sensitive than a toaster goes _bzzzzt_ ,” Hermes said.

Newt winced.

“But relax. We’ve all been there,” Hermes said. “Well, not Aunt Hestia, because she never had much to do with electricity. But all us gods who can trace our ancestry back to Zeus had that problem.”

“Which is a lot of us,” Eris said. “Especially since Zeus likes to make multiple appearances in a lot of family trees. You want to see Dionysus turn purple? Ask him how many times Zeus shows up in _his_.”

“I, um. I think I’ll pass,” Newt said slowly.

“Aww, you’re no fun.”

“Although Dionysus will be grateful,” Hermes said. “And that being said – we can teach you to control it. If, of course, you’re willing to help us.”

“To save the world. Again,” Eris said.

Newt slumped back in his chair, clearly overwhelmed by the idea.

But … he didn’t protest. Not at first. Instead he looked at all of them in turn, finally letting his gaze rest on Anathema.

She smiled. If the stakes had been any lower, Eris would have gagged on principle. “It’s your decision,” she said. “I’m the last person who can sit here and tell you that you need to be a professional descendent if you don’t want to be.”

“If,” Newt started, stopped, and licked his lips. “If—if I were to decide to be a professional descendent—I don’t suppose you’d be willing to show me the ropes?”

“Of course,” Anathema said, reaching for Newt’s hand and taking it gently—and if they didn’t cut it out, Eris was going to start gagging in earnest, stakes or no stakes.

Newt looked at the hand, swallowed hard, and turned back to the rest of them. “All—all right. What would I have to do?”

Hermes grinned. “Thought you’d never ask.”

And he told him. 

* * *

[1] Dionysus, being technically part of that chat, had to immediately put his phone on silent.

[2] CSI-editing: The art of taking terrible footage and making it great, which could entail anything from subtly adjusting the lighting to enhancing grainy images to inventing camera angles from whole cloth. Most mortals claimed that this couldn’t be done, for rational and sensible reasons founded in things like the essential nature of images and the concept of linear time. In practice, Dionysus and Ariadne had found that the hardest part was coming up with a mortal-worthy cover story to explain how they’d done it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this chapter, please feel free to leave a comment or talk to me on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Next update should be on Tuesday - and guys, there are only 3 chapters left, so within a week, you'll know how this ends!
> 
> (Unless of course you're reading this in the future. Then you'll know how it ends whenever you finish it.)


	32. Gonna Get You Some Peace Someday

“What still I don’t understand,” Crowley said, not for the first time, “is why we need to be here at all.”

It was comforting – the familiarity, if nothing else. This was far from the first time that Aziraphale and Crowley had found themselves off in the corner under some columns, nursing glasses of something-or-other, as the gears of politics and diplomacy moved invisibly around them. Indeed, once the Arrangement had come into effect, scenes like this had become frequent. After all, when one’s bosses sent one to a summit for one purpose and one’s Adversary’s bosses sent the Adversary to the same summit for the opposite purpose, the best that could be hoped for was that one and the Adversary would cancel each other out. It made far more sense to wait in the wings and enjoy wine[1] and conversation with the one person who really _understood_ – and besides, it wasn’t like the humans weren’t going to do whatever they were going to do with or without one’s influence.

The difference now, of course, was that the summit in question was in the marble halls of Mount Olympus, Aziraphale and Crowley were in something very like a starring role, and none of the participants were human.

At least they were finally on their own side.

“I suppose if people have—questions, concerns …” Aziraphale said, bringing his champagne glass up to his lips. He wasn’t quite sure why the bubbly had been brought out for the reception _before_ the summit officially began, but he certainly wasn’t about to complain. “Makes more sense to have us on hand to answer them.”

“Also makes it easier to hang us out to dry,” Crowley grumbled, downing his glass in one snake-like gulp.

“I don’t—I _don’t_ think that will happen,” Aziraphale said, wishing he sounded more convinced. He was fairly certain Dionysus would pitch an almighty fit at the idea, and Hera seemed to have thrown her lot in with theirs, for better or worse. But …

But there were so many other deities here – representatives from every pantheon, all impeccably dressed in modern clothes,[2] making it hard to tell who was who – and so many potential agendas and objectives …

If a critical mass of other deities decided that it made more sense to appease Heaven and Hell than to chastise them, then he and Crowley – and Samael, Mephistopheles, Dionysus, and even Ariadne – would make excellent scapegoats. And there was no final prophecy from Agnes Nutter to help them slither out of punishment this time.

Aziraphale very nearly drained his own glass at the thought.

Thankfully, a distraction from those gloomy thoughts arrived in the person of Ariadne, heading toward them with her own drink in hand.

“Hey,” she said, taking a place on Aziraphale’s other side. “You guys doing all right?”

“Never better,” Crowley answered. The sarcasm could have been a bit more obvious, but only if Crowley had rented a neon sign reading, _I’m being sarcastic!_ and pointed it at his head. “You?”

“Same, same,” Ariadne said with a sideways smirk and a similar amount of sarcasm. She brought her own drink to her lips.

And paused, eyes narrowed at the glasses in Aziraphale’s and Crowley’s hands. “What are you two drinking?”

“Champagne,” Aziraphale said, looking again at his glass. “Why?”

“It was good. I think,” Crowley added, holding his empty glass up to the light. “Didn’t really taste it going down.”

“Oh, ok. Good. Don’t drink the nectar.”

“Why not?” asked Crowley.

“Because there’s no sobering yourself up from it except – well – the old-fashioned way.” Ariadne shot them a rueful smile and shrugged. “I speak from experience.”

“Oh … dear …” Aziraphale murmured, and took another sip of his champagne.

He wondered what had brought Ariadne to their corner, if a warning about the nectar wasn’t the long and the short of it. And he doubted it was, because surely she would have left by now if that were the case. Instead she seemed to be settling in for the long haul, arms crossed over her chest and glass held steady, eyes watchful.

He recognized that sort of look. She was just as keyed up as the two of them were.

“I’m sure it’ll all go swimmingly,” Aziraphale forced himself to say. By the way Ariadne and Crowley looked at him, he was not believed. “After all—this is all just a … a distraction, isn’t it?”

“That’s the least of my worries,” Ariadne muttered into her glass. Aziraphale winced.

“Is everyone here yet?” Crowley asked.

Ariadne’s gaze tracked once again over the large, high-ceilinged chamber. “I think so,” she said. “Except. Well. Our contingent.”

“Oh, don’t say that. You were never on their payroll,” Crowley muttered.

Ariadne snickered. And they might have lapsed into a comfortable sort of silence, but for Crowley’s sudden hiss and, “Oh, blesss it all.”

Aziraphale stiffened, ready to drop his glass, ready to push Ariadne to safety, ready to grab the first weapon available and defend his family—

And then he saw what had drawn Crowley’s attention.

Near the door stood Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel – the last of the archangels. They were dressed in their usual light-colored business wear, except Gabriel’s outfit looked rumpled and disheveled, almost dirty, as if …

_Are those … worm tracks?_

Maybe later he’d laugh about it. Now, all Aziraphale could do was murmur, “Oh dear.”

“What’s going—” Ariadne started.

“Archangels, ten o’clock,” Crowley said. “I need another drink.”

Ariadne snapped her fingers, and Crowley’s glass refilled itself. Or maybe she’d switched the empty glass for one of the full ones on the trays carried by the nymphs circulating through the hall.

It was cold comfort, but the archangels looked almost as uncomfortable as Aziraphale felt. And they weren’t even being sensible about it – when one of the nymphs came up and offered them a drink, the three of them waved her away.

_I do not sully the temple of my celestial body with gross matter,_ Aziraphale remembered Gabriel saying. _Well, bully for you – and more for me!_ And he viciously snapped himself a refill just because he could.

Maybe it was the gesture or maybe it was the pull of Heavenly power, but something drew the archangels’ attention their way. Michael’s nostrils flared when she saw them. Uriel scowled. And Gabriel—

Gabriel stared at Ariadne, and every bit of color his corporation’s face possessed fled.

Ariadne stiffened, and Aziraphale edged closer to her, ready for—well, for anything, really—

Except it wasn’t needed, because Ariadne relaxed, grinned, and waved at Gabriel.

Gabriel sneered. Or tried to. He was a bit too green about the gills for a proper sneer. And even though things were far from over for them, Aziraphale leaned back on his heels and permitted himself a smirk and a single wiggle.

It wasn’t to last. “Uh oh,” Ariadne muttered.

“Now what?” Crowley asked.

“We have Benedict Cumberbatch right behind the archangels,” Ariadne said, tilting her glass in the direction she’d pointed out. “With, um—his girlfriends?”

“What?” Aziraphale asked, looking—

“Nah, not his girlfriends,” Crowley said, a little too easily. “The one in the mermaid gown is Dagon, and the one in the iridescent jacket is Beelzebub. Lord of the Files and Prince of Hell respectively.”

And perhaps it was saying their names that drew their attention – or maybe they were just observing Gabriel – because Dagon glanced in their direction, eyes going wide, before nudging Beelzebub and pointing. Beelzebub seemed to take a deep breath before standing up on zir tiptoes and murmuring something to Sa—Benedict Cumberbatch.

He turned in their direction, gaze raking almost carelessly over the three of them. To Aziraphale, it felt like a gut-punch – although that might have been nerves. Ariadne’s glass cracked in her hand. And Crowley hissed.

Benedict Cumberbatch smirked.

_Right,_ Aziraphale thought, and—and even though they were all technically under a truce here, clearly _something_ had to be done; he just hoped he could determine what it was before he went and did it—

_Clatter! Clatter!_

The sound of a staff – Hermes’s caduceus – tapping against the polished marble floor cut that thought off in its tracks. “Ladies and gentlebeings!” Hermes said. Somehow his voice carried effortlessly over the remainders of conversation. “Our summit is about to begin.”

On cue, the giant double doors behind him opened.

“If you would all make your way toward the meeting hall, it would be greatly appreciated. Please leave all personal communication devices in the bowls just outside the hall.” Two pedestals sprang up, each topped by a crystal bowl. “We want to be able to speak without interruption – and that goes _double_ for you, Odin; we’re not cleaning up after your ravens!”

It was only when gentle laughter broke out from every corner of the room that Aziraphale realized that the last part was meant to be a joke.

Crowley once again swallowed his champagne in one gulp; Aziraphale found himself downing the remainder of his just as quickly. “Well?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale turned to Ariadne. “Shall we, my dear?”

She didn’t answer, not at first. Instead her gaze flickered up to the balcony just to the right of the double doors, where an angel and a demon lurked in the shadows. She raised her glass to them in a silent salute.

Then, taking a deep breath, “Let’s,” she said. “It’s showtime.”

* * *

Mephistopheles’s hands trembled so badly that he kept them well away from the balustrade. He was holding onto his cel-phone, and if he dropped it to the floor below—well—they were _screwed_ , and not in the way that humans liked.

“Of course our lot has to be near the end of the line,” Samael said, leaning against one of the pillars. She breathed deeply in the way that said she was craving a cigarette. Mephistopheles hoped she didn’t reach for one – he wasn’t sure he could light it for her, with the state his hands were in.

She didn’t. Instead, she plunged both hands into her pockets and stared at the milling crowd below.

Mephistopheles watched with her.

All the gods and other associated divinities paused by the crystal bowls, dropping in mobile phones, fancy watches, magic rings, and other devices Mephistopheles couldn’t hope to name. Even Odin left his ravens behind, though they perched on the side of one of the bowls rather than being dropped inside.

It seemed to take forever before the archangels and demons arrived at the bowls. Neither party seemed to want the other at their backs, so the angels gravitated to the right-hand bowl and the demons to the left-hand one.

Mephistopheles watched carefully as Gabriel, Uriel, and Michael dropped their cel-phones into the first bowl. Then his gaze flickered to the other one, where Beelzebub and Dagon dropped pagers and Satan dropped in a square black bit of plastic and metal that could only be a crackberry.[3]

Then he looked up and locked eyes with Samael. “Ready?” she asked.

Mephistopheles nodded and looked down at the cel-phone.

He already had the email set up and ready to go. A simple missive addressed to every Heavenly user, titled URGENT: COMMUNICATION FROM THE ALMIGHTY and sent from the common archangelic email address (which Mephistopheles’s phone still had access to). Nothing was written in the email, just the video, set up to auto-play.

“On three?” Samael asked. She had her cel-phone out, too. It still worked – she was going to text the witch and the quasi-demigod – but her archangelic permissions were long gone.

“Yeah,” Mephistopheles said. “One … two … three!”

_Here goes nothing,_ he thought.

And hit send.

* * *

On the side of the road just outside of Olympic Holdings in London, a black vintage Bentley sat idling.[4] There was a clamp on one wheel, and its windshield should have been covered in tickets, except they spontaneously combusted whenever the parking officer turned his or her back. Three tow trucks had been called to haul the vehicle away to impound, but they’d all encountered tragic accidents on the way to the job[5] and had to abort mission. As for what had happened to the various car thieves who’d attempted to make a piece of automotive history their very own …

Best not to speculate.

Inside the car sat two people, humans or close enough. One of them had a cell phone on her lap. The other was holding a cassette tape.

Both were practically vibrating with nerves. And when the phone in the woman’s lap buzzed, they almost launched themselves into orbit.[6]

With trembling hands, Anathema opened the text and read it. She gulped. “That’s the signal.”

“Right,” Newt said, nodding firmly. And did nothing else.

Anathema waited. Then, “Well …?”

“Just—just.” He gulped. “Just psyching myself up for it.” He took a deep breath. “Remind—remind me what Hermes promised to do? If it all went wrong?”

“If it all goes wrong, the car will most likely explode, and we’ll be killed instantly,” Anathema said.

“Right. And—and—after?”

“Hermes promised to take us to the Underworld.”

“Right.”

“Where Crowley can’t get to us.”

“Right,” Newt said. He sounded almost relieved.

But he didn’t do anything with the tape.

The silence stretched for a few eternal seconds – until Anathema broke it like a bone china teacup falling to a cement floor. “Will you just do it?!”

Newt jumped. “Ok, ok!” Newt looked hard at the cassette tape – which was labeled “this end up” and “this end in last” for his convenience[7] – and, once he was satisfied that it was properly configured, pushed it into the Blaupunkt. Then he closed his eyes and with a trembling finger pressed play.

They waited.

At first nothing happened. Then—something. A faint sizzle. A whiff of sulfur. And a clear, calm woman’s voice making a cool announcement:

“ _Message transmitted_.”

The tape was ejected.

Newt’s eyes went wide. Anathema beamed. “We did it!” she said.

“We did it!” Newt agreed.

“We’re not dead!”

“We are not dead!”

“And the car didn’t explode!”

“ _Even better_!”

Newt turned sideways, arms wide—Anathema tumbled into them as well as she could with the console between them—their lips were mere inches from each other—

Newt froze. “Wait.”

“Mmm?” Anathema asked.

“Are we—are we _sure_ we want to do, any, um, _thing_ —”

“Sex?” Anathema, who in the time since the world had failed to end had learned to speak fluent Newt, asked. “Or sex-adjacent?”

“Right. That. Are we sure we want to do _that_ … in _here_?”

Anathema didn’t answer right away. Her gaze took in the car with equal amounts calculation and trepidation. Newt was doing the same thing.

Their eyes met, and Anathema nodded briskly. “Best not to risk it.”

“Right. Back to Dick Turpin?”

“We are not having sex in your car.”

“No, but we do need to get into it if we want to go back home and have sex there.”

“Good point. Let’s go.”

The two of them hurried out of the car, Newt barely remembering to take the tape and lock up, and then linked hands and hurried back to the Reliant Robin parked (legally) some blocks away.

As for the Bentley, it remained where it was, safe, smug, and serene, waiting for its owner to return.[8]

* * *

Meanwhile – as gods, demons, and angels took their seats in a crowded meeting hall, as one demon and one angel snuck from a balcony into that selfsame meeting hall, as a witch and her boyfriend who might have been a demigod hurried down a London sidewalk – millions of cel-phones all over the world, belonging to angels in exile, buzzed.

Meanwhile, in Hell and on Earth – anywhere a demon was in viewing or hearing distance – millions of TVs, computers, and movie screens flickered to life.

On every screen, the same image appeared. A young woman – well, young-ish, she didn’t look much past twenty-five, but looks could be deceiving – sat under an apple tree, holding one of its fruits. Her hair was flame-red and twisted into two low buns; her eyes were blue and faintly twinkling; and from her back two enormous gray wings sprouted.

She smiled at the camera before she began to speak.

“Hi,” she said. The language was English, the voice light and even with a crisp American accent. “You probably don’t recognize me, but if the Heavenly and Hellish grapevines work nearly as well as everyone around me insists that they do, you’ve probably heard of me. I’m ‘the spawn’ …”

A toss of the apple from one hand to the next.

“‘The half-breed’ …”

Another toss of the apple.

“‘That thing.’” The apple returned to its original hand, and the speaker raise an eyebrow.

“‘The redhead,’” the apple once again moved, “and when people are being exceptionally kind, ‘the young lady.’” The speaker caught the apple one last time, polished it on her shirt, and set it lightly on the ground next to her. “However, those who know me call me Ariadne.”

In the cramped corridors of Hell and around the flickering campfires of Heaven, a name was whispered wonderingly, almost reverentially, by millions of lips. _Ariadne_ …

“I am, as you’ve probably guessed by now, the only half-angel, half-demon in existence. That we know of. And for this horrible crime of daring to exist, three of your bosses wanted me dead.”

Three faces appeared on the screen, boxed in like portraits. One, Duke Hastur. The second, Archangel Gabriel. The third, Archangel Sandalphon.

“Of course, two of them are no longer with us …”

Red x’s appeared over the faces of Duke Hastur and Archangel Sandalphon.

“… May they rest in pieces.”

The image cut to a pastry sailing over the heads of five hellhounds, who swiftly gave chase, and then cut again to the Archangel Sandalphon being pounced on by a leopard.

“But in a way, I’m kind of grateful for the attempted murder,” the redhead—Ariadne continued, smirking slightly at the camera. “Because you see, if they hadn’t tried that … then you wouldn’t get to see just how easy it is to make fools of your bosses.”

A succession of scenes flashed onto the screen, each allowed to linger for just enough time to make an impression before fading into the next one.

The demon Mephistopheles unscrewing the cover off an air return vent, followed swiftly by a snake, a dove, and a cat leaping from it, changing as they hit the ground into the demon Crowley, the angel Aziraphale, and a dark-haired young man with a hint of wildness in his eyes.

That same young man and the Archangel Samael standing in a stairwell, the latter holding up a cel-phone from which spilled the demon Mephistopheles, the angel Aziraphale, and the demon Crowley.

That motley crew again, this time in what looked like Hell’s dumpsters, turning the dial on a safe to six, then six, and finally six again. A voiceover, not from Ariadne: “That is just one short step up from the combination an idiot would have on his luggage. One _very_ short step.”

Next, the demon Crowley and the demon Mephistopheles in a wide-open room surrounded by windows, setting papers stuffed into bottles alight with Hellfire.

Then the Archangel Samael in mid-flight, surrounded by catwalks, effortlessly jabbing a spear and just as effortlessly sending lightning dancing all around her.

A lion sailing over the heads of the Archangels Gabriel and Sandalphon, ripping Gabriel’s quarterstaff from his hands, then turning into the wild-eyed young man and announcing, “They’re not surrounded – _you are_ ,” as the floor bubbled and erupted in vines around him.

The demon Crowley on the shores of the lake of fire, waving a strange-looking staff just before a massive explosion went off, throwing _Satan himself_ into that lake with a wild, undignified, “AAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!”

The angel Aziraphale, kneeling on the ground, the Archangel Gabriel holding a sword inches from his throat – then the angel Aziraphale smiling, the angel Aziraphale saying, “Not today, Satan,” the angel Aziraphale whipping a can out of his pocket, squeezing and dousing the Archangel Gabriel with wriggling chaos magic and writhing worms, sending the latter stumbling back with a screamed, “AAAAAAAH!!!!”

As the Archangel Gabriel’s shout faded, the scene shifted to Ariadne under the apple tree.

“Two angels, two demons, and a wine god,” she said, “broke into Heaven and Hell, stole two of your bosses’ most important artifacts, killed a Duke of Hell and an archangel, and managed to make the rest of the management of Heaven and Hell look like idiots along the way. And the reason they succeeded isn’t because they were stronger, or faster, or more powerful than their adversaries. It was because they had love.”

Another montage of scenes.

The demon Mephistopheles holding a shivering white mongoose close to his chest, telling her, “No, absolutely not. We’re not leaving you behind. We’ll—we’ll think of something. Somehow. We always do.”

The angel Aziraphale on the shores of the lake of fire, spinning the stunned-looking demon Crowley around and kissing him soundly.

The demon Crowley falling to his knees and skidding across the gray stone tiles of the archangels’ offices, throwing his arms around the angel Aziraphale with a half-sobbing cry.

The archangel Samael squeezing the shaking hand of the pale-faced demon Mephistopheles, silently lending strength right before they jumped through a hole in the wall of Heaven.

The wild-eyed young man pushing against that same wall of Heaven, one hand in a hole in that wall, the other hand resting against it, eyes closed and shouting, “I will get her back if it kills me; I’ve already harrowed Hell for her and killed an archangel and been hit by Hellfire and been slashed with a flaming sword _and I will be FUCKING DAMNED IF I LET A WALL STAND IN MY WAY NOW!_ ”

“Oh yes,” Ariadne said, the camera once again coming to rest on her and the apple that she tossed from hand to hand. Her voice became lighter, singsong, as if she were quoting something. “‘Here’s much to do with hate, but more to do with love.’ Or really, making the choice to love.

“And that’s why I’m here,” she went on. The camera followed the apple as it went up and down, up and down, coasting through the branches to land time and time again in Ariadne’s waiting hand. “Because once upon a time, an angel and a demon chose to talk to each other on a wall – and later to fall in love. Once upon a time, another angel and another demon chose to end their misery by allying with each other – and later chose to reach out for hope, once they had a reason for it. And once upon a time, a young lady made her way through a labyrinth and learned a thing or two about choices, the making of them, and how to reach people who’d been lied to and told they didn’t have a choice.

“And that is a lie, you know,” Ariadne said almost lightly, almost as if it didn’t matter. “What your bosses told you. That angels have to obey. That demons have to follow orders. If any of that was true, I wouldn’t exist. The world, Earth as we know it, wouldn’t exist. And – this is important – many of _you_ wouldn’t exist. Or wouldn’t _still_ exist.”

She raised an eyebrow, let that sink in.

“So I’ve come to offer you a choice. Stay stuck in the same old rut – wiling and tempting, blessing and thwarting, constantly canceling each other out, enjoying nothing, wondering what it’s all for and if there’s anything more – or strike out for something new. Take hold of the free will the Almighty – yes, _Her_ – gave you Herself and don’t let go. Write your own story. Be your own person. Do what Adam and Eve did …”

Ariadne smiled and sunk her teeth into the apple. The camera zoomed in, showing the juice dribbling down her chin, the pink tongue that delicately poked out and licked her lips. “Take that forbidden fruit in both hands and gulp it down. And to help you …”

She waved a hand, and each of the cel-phones, computers, TVs, and other screens flickered, cutting from her to a world map dotted with small apples. “Some friends of mine and I have taken apples from the Tree of Knowledge – yes, that Tree – and planted them at holy sites all over the world. Non-Abrahamic, of course. And I’ve been told to let you know in no uncertain terms that attempting to harm any of the flora or fauna at those holy sites will be construed as an act of war … and that taking an apple or five from a Tree and enjoying it, or passing it to your friends to enjoy, will be seen as a token of friendship.

“This map and a complete list of GPS coordinates for every tree are being downloaded to each angelic cel-phone and every mainframe in Hell as we speak, by the way. I strongly suggest you make a hard copy before your bosses catch wind of what’s going on. Because they will, and they’ll try to stop you. Because you claiming your own freedom directly undercuts _their_ power, and they won’t want that.

“Still.” Ariadne continued to work away at the apple, chewing thoughtfully. “Why should it always be about what they want? Why can’t you have what you want?

“Now,” she shifted, tucked her legs underneath her, tilted her head and raised an eyebrow at the camera, “I know what you’re thinking – what’s the catch? Well, that’s simple enough. When you embrace your free will, you become responsible for your own choices. No more ‘the devil made me do it’ or ‘I was just doing my job.’ But here’s the thing …”

She smirked and leaned closer to the camera. “If you’re saying things like that? You’ve already acknowledged your own free will. You’re already taking some responsibility, if only to deflect it. So if you already have the guilt and the angst, why not take the freedom too?

“Oh,” she added, as if it had just occurred to her, “and if you’ve already embraced your potential as a free agent, it’ll be a lot harder for your bosses to make you into cannon fodder in the next Heaven-Hell skirmish. Just saying. Food for thought.”

To punctuate the point, she took another bite of the apple.

“So there you have it. My gift to you. The thing my parents fought so hard for. The lack of which nearly killed Samael and Mephistopheles. An apple, and a choice. Yours for the taking.

“And of course, if you don’t want to eat the apple … well, you don’t have to. It is, after all, your choice. Just remember this.”

Ariadne put the apple down, set her shoulders, and all but glared at the camera.

“Refusing to choose is a choice. Pretending not to decide is making a decision. Even if you think you don’t want an apple, you’ve already exercised your free will. And once you’ve done that, it’s very hard to stop doing it.

“Besides,” and now Ariadne’s face broke out into a smile that was positively angelic. “You can always change your mind later. That’s the nice thing about free will. Nothing is ever set in stone.

“So what’s it going to be, angels and demons?” Ariadne turned her head to one side, one eyebrow raised. “Do you really want to spend the rest of eternity as foot soldiers in someone else’s war? Paper-pushers in someone else’s company? Stormtroopers on someone else’s Death Star? Or are you ready to become the angel, the demon, or the celestial being _you’ve_ always wanted to be?

“I have to say, I’m really not sure which way you’ll jump … but I’m pretty darn excited to find out. So, until we meet again, I have just one thing to say to you.”

Ariadne once again brought the apple up to her lips. There was only one bite left.

“Bon appétit.”

With that, she winked and enjoyed that last bite.

And through the corridors of Hell and around the campfires of Heaven, screen after screen went dark.

* * *

Diplomatic summits had always been above Ariadne’s pay grade. One did not call in the God of Wine to assist with tricky negotiations.[9] One doubly did not call in his girlfriend of unknown species and uncertain powers. Centuries of experience wrangling nervous actors, irritated stagehands, and pit bands in various stages of inebriation through performance after performance apparently were not worth much when it came to the affairs of the mighty.

Or at least, that had always been the justification. Now Ariadne was wondering if it was just an excuse, because she was fairly sure that all she had seen since the double doors to the meeting hall closed behind them was some extremely boring theater.

In theory[10] they were here to “discuss recent events” and determine “a reasonable path forward.” In practice, every other pantheon had come here to vent their spleen at the Abrahamics. There had been no fewer than six speeches from various nature divinities that could be broadly summarized as Why Inciting a Nuclear Holocaust Is Bad and You Shouldn’t Do It. Agricultural deities from three different pantheons had gone into detail about the sorts of famine one could expect after blowing up the humans’ food supply and why it would all be very bad. Several deities of death, dying, and the afterlife talked at length about potential overcrowding in their domains and the difficulty of reincarnation in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. And divinities of learning and philosophy from just about every pantheon had expounded at exceedingly confusing length on the meaning of it all and the purpose of humans vis-à-vis the gods – the subtext being, of course, And What Exactly Are We Supposed to Do If There Are No Humans?[11]

Ariadne had every reason to hope that this summit and the discussions therein lasted a long time, if only so her video would have more time to bear fruit. Yet even her patience was wearing thin. And glancing around her table … Dionysus had mentally checked out three speeches in, Samael either just ahead of him or not far behind. Crowley sat so still that he might have been asleep but for the occasional tap of his fingers against the polished oak table. Mephistopheles bore the expression of someone who would be nursing a headache if he’d been forced to put up with that kind of indignity. And while Aziraphale still looked politely interested, there was far more “polite” than “interested” in his expression.

Unfortunately, it seemed like their table was not the only one losing patience with the proceedings. As Ogma gathered his notes and stepped away from the podium, Satan straightened from his indolent lounge and said in an almost bored tone, “Are we done here?”

A ripple ran through the auditorium: the sound made by hundreds of gods breathing in sharply in anticipation.

Zeus – the chair and arguably the leader of this little discussion – raised an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon? If you’ll look at the agenda—”

“Let us be frank; the agenda is nothing more than a fig leaf for your actual purpose – and if the statuary created by your worshipers is anything to go by, fig leaves have never been your strong suit.”[12] Satan raised an eyebrow as if daring Zeus to contradict him.

Zeus let both eyebrows slowly climb. “Is there a point to these out-of-order comments?”

“Simply that if all you wanted to do was make it clear that you are not pleased with our attempt at settling our differences, you may consider your point made. We understand. Now are we done here?”

“No,” Zeus said. “Although perhaps we may dispense with a few agenda items, if there are no objections. Are there?” he asked the room at large.

Miraculously, there were none – although perhaps it owed less to a miracle than it did to various leaders of pantheons forcefully shushing those of their delegations who were scheduled to speak and hadn’t yet.

“So then I assume we can move on to phase two of the agenda,” Zeus said, waving his hand. On each of the printed agendas, a new item appeared.

_Phase II: The Extraction of Reparations from Heaven and Hell_

“ _Reparations_?” Michael demanded, somewhere between a laugh and a shout. “For _what_?”

“Well, let’s see,” said Hermes, making a great show of shuffling through the papers before him, “there’s the reappearance of Atlantis and the grounding of a cruise ship on it; several human settlements and places of business in Brazil overrun with rainforests; a number of, um, ‘whaling research vessels’ eaten by the kraken – not to mention the IP dispute given that the kraken isn’t even part of _your_ mythology – and there was that one nuclear reactor that was replaced by a sherbet lemon, whatever _that_ is, although since it’s producing just as much power as the reactor without any nuclear waste, we might be willing to let that go. And—”

Gabriel coughed, cleared his throat, and smiled smugly. “Excuse me—I believe that all the damage you just cited was caused by the Antichrist. Who, of course, is an agent of Hell.”

“Would be news to him,” Crowley muttered, though not loud enough to be heard beyond their table.

“And that being the case, I believe there’s no further need for the representatives of Heaven to be here, so, if you will excuse us—” Gabriel put both hands on the arms of his chair and pushed off.

He went nowhere.

His face fell.

Michael’s eyes narrowed; Uriel’s widened; and both of them tried to stand with similar results.

Beelzebub and Dagon exchanged glances and also tried to stand. They had just as much luck as their counterparts at the other table.

Only Satan sat still. “Let me guess,” he said, sounding perfectly bored, “these chairs are of the same model as trapped Theseus and Pirithous in the Underworld?”

“Correct,” said Hades. He was sitting at a table near the front, with Persephone and Eris. Persephone looked regal. Eris was giggling. “And unlike Theseus, I don’t think you can count on Heracles to liberate …” A strange expression flickered across Hades’s face, almost too fast to catalog; Ariadne might have been seeing things, but she thought it was a grin. “ _Most_ of your, er, corporations.”

Michael scowled. “So we are prisoners here, then.”

“Yes,” Zeus replied.

“And this is how you intend to get us to agree to your ‘reparations’?” Michael scoffed.

“Certainly not. This is simply how we intend to keep you out of trouble until we’ve completed our negotiations,” Zeus said.

“When two – or more – parties negotiate, there is the implication that there will be some give and take. Some back and forth. Clearly you expect something from us,” Satan said, gesturing at the agenda, “but what is it we can expect from _you_?”

Not giving Zeus a chance to reply, Gabriel added, “Heaven would certainly be far more willing to discuss reparations if we were given custody of the traitors you are currently harboring and the artifact they stole.”

He glared at Aziraphale and Samael. Ariadne sat up, wings a half-second from snapping out to shield Samael and Aziraphale from view—

They never got the chance. Dionysus had looked up and growled.

It was not a human-sounding growl.

Gabriel went white.

“Aside from the bloody vengeance my son would wreak upon your heads if you tried,” Zeus said lightly, “that request is out of the question because it would be a poor reward for a job well done.”

Now Michael glared at Zeus. “So you’re not only harboring our traitors, you recruited them to serve your cause? Is that really a precedent you want to set, Your Majesty?”

“Recruiting? Certainly not. Their choices and indeed their mission were their own,” Zeus replied. “However, if you were to ask if we gave them aid and succor in their quest … then the answer would be absolutely _yes_.”

“And why,” Satan asked narrowly, “would that be?”

“Call it proof of concept,” Hermes said before Zeus could. “Two angels, two demons, and a wine god managed to steal two of your most precious artifacts, mop the floor with your most skilled troops, and make your leadership look like absolute morons. Now just _imagine_ what would happen to you if we decided to send in the big guns.”

“And if you were wondering what you stood to gain in the negotiations,” Zeus picked up the thread effortlessly, “it’s this: the knowledge that if you behave like civilized divinities and agree to the reparations that this summit sets forth, we won’t see a need to call in the big guns.”

“Right now,” Hermes said.

Satan’s nostrils flared. “Is that all? You won’t even put your names to a longer-term truce?”

“Absolutely not,” Zeus replied. “Our word is our bond. And we will not risk the world by binding ourselves in truce to parties who may yet prove false to us.”

“Although I think I speak for all of the wise among us when I say that we would not seek vengeance for vengeance’s sake,” said Athena, speaking for the first time. She was the only divinity who had chosen traditional dress over modern; now that she was talking, Ariadne finally understood why. The Corinthian helmet and the breastplate fitted over her chiton were more than a little bit intimidating. “Still. Someone must ensure that there is still a place that humans and their patrons may call home. Your free agents,” she nodded to Ariadne’s table, “have done an admirable job of that so far, but it is not fair to ask them to shoulder the burden alone, not when we stand to gain so much from their success and can easily share the load.”

“But don’t get too comfortable,” said Ares, who proceeded to ignore his own advice by throwing his feet up on the table – possibly so the representatives of Heaven and Hell could take a long, hard look at his combat boots and fatigues. “Because not all of us are wise. Am I right, boys?”

The room erupted in cheers, whoops, and battle cries as every war-affiliated deity in the room voiced their agreement.

The angels and the demons began to look just a bit uncomfortable. And Ariadne smirked.

Satan, however, stared impassively at Zeus. “Our incentive for continuing to participate in this farce grows less and less.”

“Nah,” said Ares. “Think of it like this, Satan—can I call you Satan?—if you play nice and do what we say, well, me and the boys _might_ decide to turn your asses into soccer balls and have ourselves a nice little game of footie. Whereas if you don’t, well … let me put it like this. Your ass is grass …”

“And we are the lawnmowers,” Athena finished, folding her hands before her and looking far too calm and serene to have just supplied the punchline to one of Ares’s attempts at a joke.

“Now if that is not enough—” Zeus began.

“We want one more thing,” Uriel interrupted.

Every single eye in the packed hall turned to her. Even her fellow archangels’.

But she did not back down.

Zeus, for a minute, seemed nonplussed, but eventually he shrugged. “We will certainly hear your request. We may not grant it, but we will hear it.”

Michael and Gabriel stared at Uriel; Uriel looked past them and to …

Their table. Ariadne found herself breathing in sharply.

“We want to know why,” Uriel said. “Why the traitors turned on their own kind and sided with—with—” Uriel waved a hand vaguely. “And not _you two_!” she snarled at Aziraphale and Crowley. “You went native! We already know that! But—but Samael …”

For a second Uriel’s face was hurt. Betrayed. “Heaven is abandoned; Sandalphon is _dead_. _Why_ , Samael?”

Samael didn’t answer. Instead she glanced sidelong at Zeus.

Zeus blinked in time with the turning of his mental gears. He did not answer right away; instead he gazed out at the assembled gods and the leaders of each pantheon.

The tables in the meeting hall were laid out in a rough semicircle facing the speaker’s podium, which Zeus and his associates sat behind. So Zeus could see the gods. And Ariadne, at their table off to the side, could see most of them. But the archangels and the demons, seated at the frontmost tables in the center of the room, could see almost none of them.

What Ariadne saw was a bit of nodding, a few faces screwed up in thought, and mostly a lot of shrugs.

“If the Archangel Samael—” Zeus started.

“She’s not an archangel,” Gabriel snapped.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s for you to decide,” Ariadne said before she could think better of it.

There was a moment of stunned silence and a glare from Gabriel that tried to be murderous but was still too unnerved by the fact of her continued survival to manage it. Zeus let it stretch just long enough to watch Gabriel squirm. “As I was saying. If the Archangel Samael is agreeable, we have no objection. However, we will not force her if she has no desire to speak.”

And with that, every gaze in the room turned to Samael.

Samael did not flinch under it. But she looked distinctly sour. And sighed. “Right. I’m going to need a bloody cigarette for this. D’you mind if I smoke?” she asked Zeus.

“A cigar—” Michael started, wonderingly.

“Not at all,” Hermes interrupted, a mischievous gleam in his eyes.

“Great. Thanks.” Samael reached in her pocket for a cigarette. But she didn’t have to fumble for her lighter, because Mephistopheles already had his thumb lit and was holding it out to her.

The archangels gasped and stared slack-jawed, Gabriel practically purple with rage. Even Dagon and Beelzebub were blinking in surprise. But Satan only raised an eyebrow.

But Samael noticed none of it, because she was too busy beaming at Mephistopheles. “Thanks, old friend.” She clapped Mephistopheles on the shoulder (gently) and leaned in close to light her cigarette. Then she pulled back, closing her eyes and taking a deep drag.

“All right,” she said, opening her eyes. “So. The thing is – we’re supposed to be the good guys.”

Crowley flinched and went very, very still.

“And no, I didn’t say a bloody thing against Armageddon – or the plagues – or Sodom and Gomorrah – or the Flood – and maybe I should have. No, I _definitely_ should have, and that’s something I have to live with, but you don’t care about that, do you? But the thing is … for so long, I’ve been bloody miserable—don’t _give_ me that look, Gabriel, I am not turning this into a pity party, it’s necessary background, all right? Because if you didn’t know that I was miserable, then you wouldn’t even begin to understand why, when I found a clever little demon lurking outside the walls of Jerusalem one sunny day, I didn’t just smite him.”

Samael looked at Mephistopheles, who simply smiled back at her.

“I almost did, you know. But I was having a rotten day. A rotten century, really. Possibly a rotten millennium. And I just didn’t have the energy. So I said, ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t smite you here,’ or something like that, and _he_ said, ‘Why should I? You’d be doing me a favor.’ And …”

Samael’s voice sounded close enough to breaking that Ariadne went digging for the Kleenex in her purse. Aziraphale was faster and passed Samael his handkerchief.

Samael smiled a watery thanks at him and dabbed her eyes. “And for the first time in my bloody life, I thought, ‘Wait, someone else feels like this too?’”

“So we made a pact,” Mephistopheles said while Samael caught her breath. “Mutually assured destruction. We fed each other enough information and caused just enough debacles for each other’s sides to ensure that when the final battle came, no matter which side won …”

“The other party would rat us out and, well. We certainly wouldn’t be left alive after that,” Samael shrugged. “Assuming we didn’t manage to meet in the final battle and end it there. But then _those two_ bollocksed up Armageddon—”

Crowley did not so much roll his eyes as roll his entire head, and Aziraphale sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“—and I won’t lie, we were both absolutely out for their blood, or at least a way to start the Armageddon train going again, until …” Now Samael’s voice went quiet, and she stared at Ariadne. “Until we tried to attack a bookshop and finally figured out _why_.”

Ariadne was fairly sure she was blushing from the roots of her hair to the soles of her feet. But that wasn’t important. Samael didn’t look at her long.

“She—whatever else Ariadne is, she’s living, breathing proof that it doesn’t have to _be_ like this! It doesn’t have to be about sides and fighting and a greater good that is drenched in so much blood and misery that it doesn’t look much different from the worst kind of evil. It _doesn’t_ ,” Samael repeated, glaring at the other archangels. “I used to wonder what was wrong with me, you know. Why I was one of God’s chosen soldiers and hated every minute of it. What was so broken inside me that I couldn’t just embrace my purpose and get on it with. And now? Now I know. I wasn’t broken. Heaven was. Is. And the only thing wrong with me was that I couldn’t understand that I wasn’t the problem.”

She took a deep, shaky breath, and fixed her gaze on Uriel. “That a good enough answer for you?”

Gabriel scoffed and Michael snorted. But Uriel – though she couldn’t meet Samael’s gaze for long – nodded.

“And what about you, Mephistopheles?” Dagon asked. When Beelzebub and Satan glared at her, she shot them a look that said, _What?_ And turned back to Mephistopheles. “What’s so miserable about Hell that you thought a suicide pact with an archangel was better than doing as you were told?”

“You mean other than everything?” Crowley asked.

“No commentzzzz from the peanut gallery,” Beelzebub snapped.

“Mephistopheles?” Zeus asked. “Do you wish to respond?”

Mephistopheles didn’t answer at once. Instead he stared at his lap, his hands, and sat so still that he might not have even been breathing.

Until he looked up. “‘Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place, but where we are is hell, and where hell is, there must we ever be,’” he said. “Marlowe wrote that. And he was wrong. Because Hell is a place. One self place, quite clearly circumscribed. And it’s a terrible place. But it’s only terrible because we made it terrible.”

He looked away, swallowing hard. “We rebelled for a reason, you know,” he went on. “It’s hard to remember now. It was so long ago. But we did. And we lost, and we Fell, and maybe we’re doomed to suffer for eternity for that, in some way. Fair enough. But right now, we’re responsible for at least ninety percent of our own suffering. And that’s what I couldn’t live with.”

Mephistopheles looked up. And he smiled.

“And now I know I don’t have to live with it. And I get to keep living.”

He had nothing more to say after that. Still, the silence stretched and deepened, until the creaking of the chairs as various divinities shifted and squirmed sounded through the room like thunderclaps.

Zeus took that as his cue. “Are these answers to your satisfaction?” he asked the archangels and the demons.

Uriel nodded, still staring at the table. Dagon shrugged. But both she and Beelzebub looked thoughtful, and Michael’s face showed just a hint of a crack.

Satan and Gabriel, however, showed nothing – or at least nothing good.

“Excellent,” Zeus said. “Now, let’s see, where were we? Ah, yes …”

He made a great show of shuffling his papers before fixing the assembled angels and demons with a gimlet-eyed stare.

“ _Reparations_.” 

* * *

[1] Or whatever other alcoholic beverage was on offer.

[2] Or at least, they looked modern to Aziraphale.

[3] Crackberries, of course, were the latest in infernal communication, meant to surpass the angelic cel-phones in every respect. In reality, they had more bugs than Beelzebub on a bad hair day and froze if you so much as looked at them funny. Most demons had shoved theirs in a drawer and stuck to their pagers, or else they acquired human phones. Satan must have had the only one that actually worked.

[4] Properly parked, not hanging half off the curb. When its owner was otherwise occupied, the Bentley had standards.

[5] Though, miraculously, no one had been hurt.

[6] Perhaps Ariadne had accidentally added ejector seats?

[7] Upon realizing that Newt was under thirty, Ariadne had left nothing to chance.

[8] And if in the course of waiting it happened to shoot fire out its exhaust at some wankers who tried to park too close, surely that was between the Bentley and its god.

[9] Although he generally did manage to score an invite to the afterparty, if only as a bartender.

[10] As far as the Abrahamics were concerned.

[11] Apollo’s had been particularly egregious. Half of it had consisted of words that Ariadne could define singly, but not together, and the other half consisted of words Ariadne was relatively certain he’d just made up.

[12] There was quite possibly a joke to be made there about strong suits and birthday suits, but since Ariadne liked living, she wasn’t going to make it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWO MORE CHAPTERS, FOLKS. TWO MORE CHAPTERS!
> 
> In the meantime, if you've enjoyed what you've read so far, why not leave a comment or chat with me on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/)?


	33. In Rain or Shine You've Stood by Me

The discussion of reparations took some time, time that, had they been on Earth, would have been measured in hours and days, though not weeks. And while the discussion went on, no one entered or left the meeting hall.

Through it all, Hera said not a word. She remained by Zeus’s side, hands neatly folded in her lap, the portrait of queenly dignity and composure. Not still as one of her statues, no – she let herself react as necessary – but she did show anything of importance.

Her role in this drama would not come until the end, and it would not do to spoil it.

Eventually, the discussions – or the negotiations, or the browbeating – came to an end. The non-Abrahamic divinities had gained most of what they wanted. They could not bargain for followers directly, mortals being free to choose which gods to follow or indeed whether to follow any gods at all. But they could, and did, demand that the demons and angels greatly scale back their interference with the mortal world. They could, and did, demand a great reduction in arms. And they could, and did, make a host of other demands, settling grudges centuries old and ending newer conflicts at once.

One of those demands was a foreswearing of violence against and interference with the lives of Aziraphale, Crowley, Samael, Mephistopheles, and Ariadne. Neither Heaven nor Hell had been eager to give in on that one, at least not until Ares, Athena, and the other war divinities had made a series of not-so-veiled threats. But that did not surprise Hera; four of them were traitors of the worst type and the fifth was a wild card too dangerous to be left to her own devices. Of course neither Heaven nor Hell would want to let them go.

What _did_ surprise her was the shocked looks on the faces of the five beings so bargained for (to say nothing of Dionysus).

Samael and Mephistopheles she could understand – their treason was new; they were sheltered; they had no reason to expect at the other pantheons would deal fairly with them. Aziraphale and Crowley … she could understand that as well, given how their own people had treated them (though she would have hoped Aziraphale would be clever enough to see that he and Crowley were far too intriguing to be left to the tender mercies of Heaven and Hell). But Ariadne? _Dionysus_? They had been part of this family for thousands of years; how could it come as a shock to them that the family would protect them?

It was a conundrum that demanded unraveling. And unravel it Hera would – later. For now …

Well. She was the Goddess of Marriage, and she had a sacred duty to attend to.

So as the gods began to slowly filter out of the assembly hall – stretching cramped limbs, meeting old friends, complaining about how long this had taken – Hera followed them. She placed herself three steps behind her target. There was a bottleneck at the door as the gods gathered their communication devices; Hera would have to time this carefully to ensure that she made contact with her target before he had a chance to look at the device that had surely (to use the modern parlance) blown up with messages as the negotiations dragged on.

So Hera waited until her target and his entourage were within steps of the door, and then she called, “ _Pappoús_!”

Her target – Satan himself – froze. Slowly, he turned and raised an imperious eyebrow at her.

Hera stood up straight, clasped her hands before her, and smiled innocently. “Walk with me? It’s been so long since we had a chance to catch up, _Pappoús_.”

Dagon and Beelzebub had stopped walking as well; they exchanged glances, and Beelzebub was the first to speak. “Your Lowlinezzz, why izz she calling you grand—”

Satan held up a hand; Beelzebub shut zir mouth. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up.”

Once again, Dagon and Beelzebub exchanged glances. “As you wish, sir,” Dagon said. Then she and Beelzebub started walking again (to the extent they were able, with the crowd).

Satan, however, merely stood with his hands in his pockets and raised an eyebrow at Hera. “You wished to speak with me?”

“I did. Come. I always find the view from the balcony to be quite inspiring at this hour.” Hera waved a hand, and a set of double doors that hadn’t existed before swung open, showing a marble balcony drenched in starlight.

Satan’s eyebrows rose, but he fell into step with Hera and accompanied her to the balcony. As soon as they were outside, the doors swung closed and disappeared.

For a long moment they said nothing, both staring into the Olympian sky. It was not terribly different from view of the sky from the mortal plane, except for the lack of light pollution – and that those constellations that had been picked out by the gods and goddesses of Olympus shone twice as brightly as all the others.

The silence was broken by a sigh – Satan’s. “Is this a backhanded insult, _engoní_?”

“Ah. So you admit it,” Hera said.

“There is no point doing anything else. I made the mistake of showing my hand to that boy; he understood my meaning; he told you. You know, I know, you know I know, etc., etc.” Satan shrugged. “Now, did you mean to insult me by bringing me out here, or not?”

Hera snorted. “Certainly not. I simply meant to remind you of who you truly are.” She raised an eyebrow. “And since you are now reminded, can you please dispense with that ridiculous disguise?”

“Are you not fond of Benedict Cumberbatch?” Satan asked, something like mischief in his eyes.

“To wear the face of a mortal actor is beneath your dignity, _Pappoús_. It is something my husband would do in pursuit of—well.”

“And we cannot have that, can we?” Satan asked. He looked up at the sky, face inscrutable, even as the stars twinkled in his eyes.

Then he sighed, shrugged, and changed. Benedict Cumberbatch melted away, replaced by a half-naked man-shaped being with skin as blue as the midnight sky, speckled all over with pinpricks of light that shone like stars. He was tall – taller than any of the gods – and broad-shouldered, with thick, curly black hair and an equally curly beard that puffed around his face like a cloud. And his features had more than a look of Zeus to them.

That, however, was to be expected, given that the deity that now stood before Hera was one-half of the trunk of their family tree.

She bowed her head, the respect even the Queen of the Gods owed to one of the primordial deities. “Ouranos.”

“Hera,” he replied, bowing his head in mutual respect. “So. Why did you wish to speak with me?”

She did not spin a yarn about simply wanting to catch up. He had placed his cards on the table; she would do the same. “It is past time that you and _Giagiá_ reached an accord. This conflict has gone on long enough.”

Ouranos chuckled. It was not a pleasant sound. “Oh, has it? And tell me, little one, how do you suppose we might go about such a thing? I have not spoken to your _giagiá_ since she served me divorce papers by way of Kronos and a flint sickle.”

“As it happens, I have an idea for that.” Hera reached into her handbag and pulled out a card. “I’ve freed up Thursdays at three o’clock for the pair of you.”

“What,” Ouranos said flatly, taking the card instinctively and glowering at it.

“Couples counseling,” Hera said. “Now, I should warn you at the outset that the objective of couples counseling is not and cannot always be to continue a romantic relationship. However, I _do_ believe that I can help the two of you learn to approach conflict more constructively, which is a skill you _direly_ need to develop if you wish to be effective co-parents to, essentially, the entire universe—”

Ouranos threw his head back and laughed. It rebounded off the palace and the mountains like the crack of thunder and echoed through the valleys like the howling of the wind. “And you think _you_ can show us how to do that?”

“I am the Goddess of Marriage,” Hera said simply.

“Yes, and your marriage—”

“Is not perfect,” Hera interrupted. “And it never will be perfect. But it is _vastly_ better than it once was. And the skills I learned to improve my marriage can be taught. I can teach them, and I will.”

“Can you? To us?” Something flickered across his face, there and gone too quickly for Hera to read. “I think not. The conflict between your _giagiá_ and me is not one you could even understand, little one. It has more facets than a fine-cut diamond, and no matter how many times you seek to look through it, you’ll only see a different refraction.”

“Perhaps,” Hera said. “But for what I intend to do … it doesn’t matter whether the refraction I see is that of Kronos attacking you with a flint sickle or Michael casting you out of Heaven or any of the myriad other versions of the sundering between you and Gaia. I merely need to know how you felt, how Gaia felt, how you both feel now, and how you wish to move forward.”

Ouranos watched her with an expression that could, perhaps, have been sad. He finally turned away with a sigh. “I envy your faith, little one … even as I wonder if perhaps it is hubris you have instead.”

Hera snorted. “Please. I managed to repair my own marriage. What faith, what confidence I have in my abilities is earned.”

“Yet even you cannot hope to heal this breach if you can’t find the other side of it,” Ouranos murmured, turning over the card in his hands. “Do you even know where Gaia is? I admit it freely; I don’t. She disappeared from my sight centuries ago, and I have not been able to find her since.”

_Have you looked?_ Hera wondered, but did not ask. “As it happens, I do,” she replied.

Ouranos breathed in sharply and fixed her with a gaze that could have been demanding, or hungry, or yearning.

“And I shan’t tell you where she is,” Hera continued. “She may, though. Someday. If she decides she trusts you enough. Or she may not. That’s something we can work on – either Gaia deciding to tell you, or you learning to live with the fact that she will not.”

“And if she refuses to participate at all? What then?”

“Then you are still welcome to come to me on Thursdays at three. Even if you can’t control what she does, you can control your reaction to it, and I daresay you need to work on anger management, among other things.”

Ouranos snorted. “You have an answer for everything,” he muttered. Once again, he turned the card over in his hands. “I will think about it,” he pronounced finally. “More than that, I cannot promise. But I will think about it.”

“More than that, I would not ask. Thank you.” Hera smiled and bowed her head again. “Would you like to change before we return inside? I daresay your lieutenants would be quite surprised to find you in this form.”

He looked down at his blue body and snorted. “They would indeed.” He snapped his fingers, and Ouranos disappeared, replaced by Satan wearing the face of Benedict Cumberbatch.

In reply, Hera snapped her fingers, and another set of double doors swung open. These led to the antechamber in which the gods had been waiting before the summit began. It was nearly empty now – plenty of the gods had returned home, and those who wished to socialize were doing it in the banqueting hall – but five divinities remained.

They were Beelzebub, Dagon, Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel. They were standing by the crystal bowls. And each one was holding a pager or a cel-phone, reading through messages with a look of growing panic and horror.

Satan took one look at the tableau and sighed. “Let me guess – you know exactly why my lieutenants and my erstwhile adversaries look like _that_.”

“I do,” Hera said.

“I suppose you had something to do with it as well.”

“Indeed I did, although not as much as others.”

“And I suppose you won’t tell me what’s going on.”

“You’ll find out for yourself in a moment,” Hera answered, not unkindly.

Satan shook his head, and then he raised one eyebrow and looked curiously at Hera. “You know … I know not whether to call you your grandmother’s granddaughter or your grandfather’s.”

Hera’s only reply was a smile. “Why choose? I’m both.” She patted his arm. “Stay well, _Pappoús_. I’ll see you on Thursday at three.”

And with that said, Hera adjusted her shawl and preceded Satan into the antechamber, in search of the banquet hall and the rest of her family.

* * *

Dionysus had a drink in his hand, his arm around his favorite person in the world, and a prime spot in the banqueting hall. Heaven and Hell were out of their hair for now. Their video, if the horrified looks on the faces of the archangels and arch-demons were anything to go by, had made quite the impact. And now he had only one thing left to decide: whether to bribe Apollo into playing some decent music – something they could dance to – and get the party started, or whether to drag Ariadne off to a dark, quiet corner and get the orgy started.

“Not until I’ve eaten,” Ariadne said, drawing Dionysus out of his reverie.

“Huh?”

“I _know_ that look.” Ariadne smiled at him fondly. “We can do whatever you want, but not until I’ve had some food.”

“Oh, _whatever_ I want?” Dionysus asked. They were alone – or as alone as they could be in a crowded banquet hall – which was why he could be so very obvious in his intentions. He smirked. “You sure you want to be signing that kind of blank check, darling?”

Ariadne’s response was to raise an eyebrow, very deliberately set her glass down on the nearest cocktail table, grab Dionysus by the lapels, and yank him down into a searing kiss.

Dionysus growled low in his throat, and he thought – before the idea of coherent thoughts became laughable – _Orgy. We are_ definitely _doing the orgy._

They might have stayed that way until the angels and demons came back from the buffet tables,[1] but for a highly annoying voice that made its presence known behind Dionysus. “Dionysus! Humors, madman, passion, lover!”

Ariadne groaned, and not in a good way, and Dionysus let her go with some reluctance. But he didn’t turn around. “That doesn’t scan.”

“Not my fault that your name has four syllables and Romeo’s has three, kid,” said Hermes. “Do you want me to keep going? I know the whole speech.”

“You know _all_ of Mercutio’s speeches.”

“Of course! It’s the least I can do, since you inspired old Billy to base one of his best characters on me.”

“I did no such thing.” Now Dionysus turned around, smirking at his brother. “I simply noticed that he was writing a clever pain in the ass with terminal diarrhea of the mouth, and I said, ‘You know what you should name him, Shakes? Mercutio!’”

“Dionysus! I am _wounded_.” Hermes pressed his hand over his heart. “My diarrhea of the mouth is _far_ from terminal – and Mercutio died of a stab wound, anyway.”

Dionysus might have had another smart remark in reply to that, except he noticed something. Hermes had swapped his sport jacket and jeans for a chlamys, hat, and winged sandals. Dionysus’s eyebrows rose. “Psychopomp-ing again?”

“Nah. Gotta make a delivery. Given the recipient, I figured traditional was better.” Hermes grinned and made sure his hat was at its typical jaunty angle. “Anyway, believe it or not, I didn’t come here to have my character and my fashion sense insulted. Pater wants to talk to you.”

Dionysus’s stomach dropped to the depths of Tartarus, and he nearly dropped his wine glass.

“What?” Ariadne demanded, plucking the glass from his hand and setting it on the table before edging closer to him – as if she would push past him, as if she’d stand between Dionysus and whatever his father had planned for him.

“Apparently he still has more yelling to do,” Hermes said lightly. “Now, Dionysus, he _said_ he wanted to speak to you alone, but—”

“Absolutely not,” Ariadne said.

Hermes clicked his tongue and pointed at Ariadne. “You took the words right out of my mouth – I mean, considering what happened the _last_ time Pater insisted on speaking to Dionysus alone—”

“Yeah, no, we get it,” Dionysus grumbled.

Hermes clapped him on the shoulder. “Attaboy. You’re not nearly as dumb as you look, you know that, right? And …” Hermes cocked his head to one side, one eyebrow raised. “Cheer up. After all, what’s the worst he could do to _you_?”

There was something in the way that Hermes said _you_ that jumped up and down and demanded Dionysus’s attention, but when he tried to chase the thought down, it slithered out of his grasp and went hiding in the undergrowth. Dionysus sighed. Hopefully it would come to him. “Where is Father?”

“Balcony,” Hermes said, jerking his thumb in that direction. “Good luck, kid.”

“Thanks. I’ll need it.”

Hermes nodded and saluted before striding off. Dionysus busied himself straightening his tie and trying to put his jacket in some semblance of order. Just before he started off, he was interrupted by a tug on his sleeve.

He looked back to see Ariadne holding out her hand with a faint smile.

Dionysus took that hand – clung to it – and tried to smile back. Then both took a deep breath and threaded their way through the crowds.

As Hermes had promised, Zeus was waiting for them on the balcony – well, _a_ balcony; the palace had dozens of them, and more were liable to pop into existence when someone needed a quiet place for a tête-à-tête. He was alone, standing near the balustrade with his back to the door. He gazed at the sky, and Dionysus looked too.

He blinked.

Corona Borealis was climbing over the horizon. But that didn’t make sense; it was too late in the year for Corona Borealis; and the stars in Olympus always mirrored the stars on Earth—

Ariadne had shut the door behind them; Zeus was turning around; and Dionysus had to bring his mind back to the here and now.

Zeus took one look at Ariadne and sighed. He then turned to Dionysus. “I told Hermes that I wished to speak with you alone.”

“And he passed the message along, and we decided we didn’t care,” Ariadne answered. She drew herself up to her full height, which, even in heels, was pathetic when compared to the height of Zeus. “If you want to shout at someone for disobeying orders, shout at the one who actually disobeyed.”

Zeus’s nostrils flared. “Dionysus—”

“Knew absolutely nothing about what I was planning or doing until I’d already done it. And the only reason he got involved was because he learned that _you_ had found out. So as I said …” Ariadne looked very much like she would like to cross her arms over her chest; however, that would entail letting go of his hand, so Dionysus was grateful that she didn’t. “If you want to shout at someone, shout at me.”

Zeus blinked at her slowly. Then he took his glass from where it rested on the balustrade and drained it in a single gulp. “Very well. Have it your way.”

Zeus took a deep breath and puffed himself up. Ariadne tilted her chin and squared her shoulders. And Dionysus looked between the two of them, helpless, and realized—

_“Next time Pater gets pissed at you, remind him of that display. That ought to be another get-out-of-jail free card for you for at least the next couple thousand years.”_

_“After all, what’s the worst he could do to_ you _?”_

—that he didn’t have to put up with this.

He squeezed Ariadne’s hand once for luck, pulled her a little closer, and glared at Zeus. “Father? Shut up.”

Zeus hadn’t even said anything, but the air went out of him like a popped balloon. Ariadne goggled at Dionysus.

“I beg your—” Zeus started.

“Yes, you’d better,” Dionysus said. “You’d better beg for a _lot_ of things. Because from where I’m standing, you ought to be the one apologizing to us.”

Now Zeus blinked. Then he smirked – as if this was a joke, as if he was only playing along because it amused him to see what Dionysus would come up with. “Oh? What for?”

“Well, let’s start with my _entire childhood_ , because not only did you not stop Hera from making it as miserable as she could, you also never bothered to show up for any of it. And then—we’ll fast forward a bit—to the first time I brought Ariadne to Olympus. You figured out there was something odd about her—didn’t mention a word of it _to_ her—and had Athena do some tests without asking Ariadne if it was all right. And when those tests came back ‘who the fuck knows,’ you washed your hands of Ariadne in front of the entire Olympian court, because she isn’t ‘one of us.’ Like she didn’t even matter.”

Zeus sighed and rolled his eyes. “Son—”

“No.” That made Zeus blink. “You don’t get to call me ‘son’ when you try to justify how you treated the person that I care about most. Because—because here’s the thing—even if Ariadne _didn’t_ matter to you, you knew damned well she matters _to me_ , and if _I_ mattered to you at all, then _that_ would matter. But it didn’t, so, well, I suppose that answers that question, doesn’t it?”

Zeus breathed in sharply – but it wasn’t so he could gather air for a rant. More like he’d just been dealt a blow.

_Good,_ Dionysus thought, and continued – still clinging to Ariadne’s hand – without mercy. “Now let’s skip ahead a few thousand years, which you spent mostly ignoring us unless you wanted something from us – which, believe it or not, I’m willing to forgive without an apology, because that’s how we preferred it – to last month, when the Apocalypse didn’t happen and you summoned us all to London. Hera figured out who Ariadne’s parents were and tried to bargain with Aziraphale. And you …”

Dionysus waited, watching Zeus’s face closely for a hint of surprise or a flash of denial. There was nothing.

“You knew,” Dionysus said, and it should have been angry, but it came out sad instead. “You knew, and you either didn’t stop her or you conspired with her – and it never _once_ occurred to you to tell Ari about this. Instead you used her as bait until she took her fate into her own hands because she didn’t trust you. And when she did that …”

Dionysus’s hands were starting to shake; Ariadne stepped closer to him and ran her free hand up and down his arm, shushing gently, but it made no difference. In the end, Dionysus still shouted.

“ _You broke xenia_!”

The shout echoed off the marble palace and the mountains ringing it. It might have shattered a window or two. Dionysus didn’t look. He didn’t care.

The only thing he was looking at, the only thing he cared about, was Zeus.

Zeus winced.

Ariadne saw it as surely as he did; he heard her gasp, quick as she tried to stifle it. “You broke xenia,” he repeated. “Tell me, Father, on the scale of massive fuck-ups from the kings of the gods, does that rate above, below, or in between locking your ugliest children up in Tartarus and swallowing your own children whole?”

Zeus looked up, eyes blazing like lightning. “Son—”

“Don’t. Call. Me. Son.”

“Are you saying you aren’t my son?” Zeus asked with a faintly predatory gleam in his eye.

And perhaps that was what saved Dionysus. Because as angry as he was, that predatory gleam reminded him that Zeus was wily, Zeus was canny, and that Zeus would not ask a question like that without a reason.

So instead Dionysus snorted. “No. I’m too much of an asshole to be anyone’s son but yours. I’m just saying you’re not allowed to call me ‘son’ unless you want to step up and act like a father who cares. Instead of, say, like your father. And his father.”

Zeus’s eyes narrowed. Dionysus barreled on anyway.

“Because if you don’t – I might have to start to act like _you_.”

And there it was. Zeus sucked in air like a vacuum cleaner – Ariadne went absolutely still.

And Dionysus said nothing further, plunging his free hand into his pocket and raising an eyebrow at Zeus.

“Do you truly think you’re strong enough to stand against me, boy?” Zeus asked, his voice a low rumble of thunder.

“I think I wouldn’t know until I tried,” Dionysus replied. “But I do know that I’m the youngest of the Olympians. And that I was strong enough to hold my own in Hell. And strong enough to punch a hole through the walls of Heaven. And that _you_ broke xenia.” And he smiled, the devil-may-care grin that had served him so very well over so many millennia. “Tell me, Father – are you sure _you_ want to find out?”

Zeus snorted and looked away, plunging his hands into his pockets. Dionysus took that as victory.

Until Zeus sighed and turned back. “So what are your terms?”

Holding back his smile took every shred of acting ability he possessed, but luckily acting ability was something Dionysus had in spades. “Some respect would be a good start – for Ari as well as for me. Non-interference in our affairs. And whatever half-cocked scheme you and Hera came up with to create Jesus 2.0 by way of Ariadne and me ends _now_.”

Ariadne choked and stared at him – right, he hadn’t mentioned that to her – but Zeus snorted. “Believe me, that scheme ended a long time ago. The only certain thing about any child you two might produce is that that child will not follow any script we’d care to lay out.” He cocked his head to one side. “Anything else?”

“It should go without saying that any talk of punishment or discipline for disobeying your orders ends here,” Dionysus said.

“It does.”

“Then I think we have an accord – for now.” And Dionysus stuck out his free hand.

Zeus surveyed it with raised eyebrows. “What—no asking me to swear by the Styx?”

Dionysus considered that. He really did. But he shook his head in the end all the same. “No. There’s something to be said for free will, after all. Let’s see how you choose to act when there’s no vow forcing your hand.”

Zeus raised his eyebrows, but he said nothing. Instead, he shook Dionysus’s hand. His grip was firm and dry; the handshake was a brief pump and then over as if both parties couldn’t wait to let go.

Dionysus nodded to his father, put an arm around Ariadne’s shoulders, and turned them both to leave.

“S—Dionysus.”

Dionysus stopped. Ariadne shot him a concerned glance, but Dionysus still looked back. “Yes?”

“You are still my son,” Zeus said. “And unlike my father and his father, I have never sought to destroy my own child, no matter what threat he posed to me.”

“Hephaestus might dispute that.”

Zeus flinched. “That—that is between your brother and me. What I … what I do _not_ want is for an uneasy truce to be all that lies between us.”

Dionysus looked away. And forced a shrug. “Well, it doesn’t have to be.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“No,” Dionysus admitted. “But whether it will be or not—well, that’s up to you, Father.”

And not saying another word – because there was nothing he trusted himself to say – Dionysus wrapped his arm more tightly around Ariadne’s shoulders and walked them back into the banquet hall.

Because tonight was a night for celebration. Against the odds, they had _won_. And like any returning heroes, they deserved to celebrate their triumph.

And Dionysus knew _exactly_ who he wanted to celebrate his with.

* * *

Deep in the Underworld, there was a rock wall with a stylized gate carved into it and an inscription etched above it. Before that rock wall stood a god. He’d taken off his hat, the better to scratch his head, and was tapping one sandaled foot on the asphodel-covered meadow.

“Let’s see …” Hermes murmured to himself. “Password, password, what’s the password …”

As a god of messengers and messages, Hermes had a flair for written communication. As such, he’d been able to tell what alphabet he was looking at and could make a guess as to what was being asked of him. But that flair did not extend to being able to instantly speak and read every language on earth – or at least, it didn’t when another deity, a far more powerful and primordial Deity, didn’t it want to. Whether this Deity’s power would have worked if the inscription was in a language Hermes actually knew was an open question, but since Hermes had never taken the time to learn Sindarin, it was also something of a moot question.[2]

Still, Hermes had seen this movie and found it quite entertaining – now if only his memory would cooperate …

“Hmmmm,” he mused. “Pear?” he asked.

The gate did not open – but a playful green spark lit up the etching.

Hermes grinned. “All righty then … raspberry? Grapefruit? Please for the love of all that’s good and holy, don’t tell me it’s apple.”

The gate sparked green at raspberry, yellow at grapefruit, and then green again – almost like it was laughing – at apple.

“Oh thank—Somebody,” Hermes murmured. “Let’s see, let’s see … banana? Strawberry? Cantaloupe? Pineapple?”

The spark shifted from green to yellow, edging closer to orange – and from there, eventually, one would assume, to red – with every guess.

“Pomegranate? Cherry? Lime? … Kumquat?”

The gate flashed red at the last one.

“Wait! I remember now!” Hermes threw both arms out in triumph. “ _Melon_!”

For a second, nothing happened.

Then, with a grinding of stone-on-stone, the entire etching shifted backward, fading into blackness. And from that blackness stepped a being that looked like a middle-aged woman with blond hair and large dimples. Not that the dimples were visible, since she wasn’t smiling. Instead she stood with her hands on her hips and scowled.

Still, appearances could be deceiving, and while this Being was a lot of things … a middle-aged blonde wasn’t one of them.

She was annoyed, though. That part of her appearance wasn’t deceiving at all.

“Kumquat?” she asked, glaring at Hermes.

Hermes ignored the glare and the question, instead throwing open his arms for a hug. “ _Progiagiá_!”

“ _Kumquat_?!” the being repeated, still glaring.

“Aw, come on, _Progiagiá_.” Hermes pretended to pout. “Haven’t you got something nicer to say to your favorite _diségonos_?”

“You are not my favorite great-grandson.” She sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “What you are is a menace.”

Hermes tilted his head to the side and pretended to think about that. “… Your _favorite_ menace?”

The being paused in her rubbing. She kept her face stern, surveying Hermes through her lashes.

Hermes beamed back at her.

And finally, Gaia smiled.

“Maybe,” she admitted. “What brings you to the Eastern Gate, Hermes?”

“Oh, this is the Eastern Gate?” Hermes mused, looking up at the place where the inscription had been – but the inscription had long since faded into blackness. “In-ter-est-ing.”

“The Eastern Gate has always been the way to leave the garden,” Gaia replied, as if that were a statement that made any sense whatsoever.

“Oh, I’m sure,” Hermes muttered. “Anyway!” He reached into his messenger bag – the only modern part of his ensemble – and pulled out a small rectangle of paper with a flourish. “I bring a message for you!”

Gaia blinked. “Oh?” And without hesitation or a hint of fear – though really, what in this universe would she have to fear? – she took it.

She frowned. “This looks like an appointment card.”

“That would be because it is an appointment card.”

“To …” Gaia flipped the card over, and her eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “ _Couples counseling_?!”

“According to Hera, you and _Propappoús_ need to work on your co-parenting skills. And, uh, between you and me? She is _not_ wrong.”

Gaia paused in her stunned survey of the card long enough to glare at Hermes.

Hermes grinned back.

“She’s wasting her time,” Gaia muttered. “He’d never agree to it. Compromise and sane conflict resolution are not his strong points.”

“Couldn’t he say much the same about you?” Hermes asked. When Gaia glared, he added, “Look, I’m just saying, there has to be a kinder, gentler way to say, ‘Honey, this relationship just isn’t doing it for me’ than to send your kid to ambush your soon-to-be-ex and chop off his—”

“Hermes,” Gaia said. Something about the tone – or maybe the look that accompanied it – shut him up in a hurry.

For a minute preternatural silence reigned, Gaia turning the card back and forth in her hands. Hermes took a deep breath and slowly, carefully tilted his head to one side. “ _Progiagiá_?”

She raised an eyebrow at him.

“You sent Ariadne back into the world to help put Heaven and Hell back together again. How can you do that in good conscience without being willing to do some of the work yourself?”

Gaia looked haunted, stricken. And then she sighed. “But what if he doesn’t come?”

“Then you work on your own reactions to things.” Hermes shrugged. “And at least you can say you tried. When’s the last time you were able to say that, eh?”

Gaia winced and looked back at the card. “Thursdays at three,” she murmured.

“And what do you have to lose?” Hermes asked. “A therapist’s office is the ultimate in neutral ground. That goes double when Hera’s the therapist. I don’t think even _Propappoús_ would dare to screw around in her territory. If he tried, she’d find his bits and stick ‘em back on just so she could cut ‘em off again.”

That made Gaia chuckle – a grim chuckle, but a chuckle nonetheless. “Aphrodite wouldn’t appreciate that.”

“Nor would Ares, but pleasing those two has never been Hera’s top priority. Probably not even in the top ten.”

“Probably not,” Gaia murmured. She took one last look at the card, sighed, and spirited it into a pocket that appeared just as she needed it and disappeared when it was no longer necessary. “I’ll think about it.”

“Take as long as you need,” Hermes replied. “That appointment slot will be there whenever you decide to show up – whether that’s next Thursday or Thursday a year from now, a decade from now, or a century from now.”

Gaia smiled slightly before looking away, almost as if she was—nervous? “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to carry a message back for me?”

Hermes blinked. “You—you want to send a message back? To who? Hera? Zeus? He still hasn’t had a chance to shout at Hades and Persephone for hiding you for Fates-know-how-long; if you could maybe put him into his place before he could do that, they’d be _very_ grateful—”

“It’s not from me,” Gaia said. “It’s from—well—see for yourself.” She pulled another card from another there-and-gone pocket, this one a bit larger, and handed it to Hermes.

Hermes frowned at the card. The side that faced up had a simple drawing on it, done by a clearly unskilled hand. It showed a hillside with two stick figures lying on it. One stick figure had horns. The other had red hair. And they were holding hands.

Hermes’s jaw fell. “She’s going to cry for a week when she sees this – you know that, right?”

“Yes,” Gaia said. “If she questions it …”

Hermes looked up with a raised eyebrow.

“Call it a reward for a job well done.”

Hermes blinked. “The work’s not yet done, _Progiagiá_.”

“No, it isn’t. But she’s done what I asked her to do. The rest is up to them.” And Gaia shrugged with a soft smile.

“Fair enough.” Hermes tucked the postcard into his messenger bag. “Is this to be the start of a regular correspondence between those two, then?”

“I hope so,” Gaia replied.

“Then I’ll see you again soon. Or, well. Soon-ish. Ari’s got to get over her crying jag first.”

“Tell her to take her time.”

“I will.” Hermes winked and tipped his hat to her. “ _Au revoir_ , _Progiagiá_.”

“ _Au revoir_ ,” Gaia replied.

Hermes had just turned to go when a voice called him back. “Hermes?”

He turned back to see Gaia still waiting in the shadows that had once been an etching of a gate. “Yes?”

“Give …” She pursed her lips together, looking away, then took a deep breath and faced him once again. “Give my love to the family, won’t you?”

“Always, _Progiagiá_.”

And then – with a wink, a smile, a wave of his caduceus and a click of his heels – he was gone. 

* * *

[1] Aziraphale, of course, had been hungry, and Crowley had elected to teach Samael and Mephistopheles about the finer points of wine consumption.

[2] In Hermes’s defense, mortals were incredibly inventive when it came to language and writing, and it was enough of a job to keep up with the languages used by actual people living and dead; he didn’t have time to learn languages that were only spoken by fictional people and complete nerds. And if he did have that kind of time, he’d be learning Klingon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys. Guys. ONE MORE CHAPTER. One more chapter and this thing is DONE. Saturday evening (if all goes well), this thing is DONE.
> 
> In the meantime, you know the drill - comment and come chat with me on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/) if you're so inclined!


	34. I Know Who I Want to Take Me Home

_Circa 2019 A.D._

_Athens, Greece_

In the weeks since Armageddon had failed to happen, much had changed. Heaven and Hell were, if anything, in even more disarray than they had been in the wake of a botched apocalypse and two failed executions. Renegade angels and rebellious demons all over the world were gaining their first tastes of free will and learning what they could do with it. And summer had mellowed into a golden autumn.[1]

Yet some things hadn’t changed, and one of those things was that the safest place for an angel and a demon to meet was in a holy space controlled by a deity from another pantheon.[2] So Samael and Mephistopheles were cooling their heels in the Parthenon.

That, too, had changed since the summer. Now a large, leafy-bowed apple tree grew in the dead center of the ruin. Its branches were weighed down with fruit, though that wasn’t terribly unusual, given the season. It would be much more unusual when winter came, and the leaves and apples never left, and then when spring came again and the tree began to blossom even as it continued to bear fruit.

At least the humans were unlikely to notice. After all, they hadn’t noticed the apple tree sprout up literally overnight. Nor had they noticed the gray stone benches that ringed the tree. And they didn’t notice Samael and Mephistopheles sitting on one of the benches, Mephistopheles hunched over his cel-phone and Samael meditatively puffing away at a cigarette.

“I’m telling you, you should take it, Mephistopheles,” Samael was saying. It was not the first time she’d expressed the sentiment. “The Greek Goddess of Wisdom wants to start an interfaith research institute and offers you one of the first fellowships? That’s amazing. Well, not _too_ amazing, you are smart, just—look, I just think you should take it, because I think it’ll make you happy, and you bloody well deserve some recognition after all this time.”

“Mmmm. I’m still thinking about it,” Mephistopheles hedged. Then he held up the phone to her. “What do you think of this one?”

Samael wondered what there was to think about, but then remembered – this was Mephistopheles. He thought about _everything_. Best to leave him to it. So she squinted down at the phone screen.

“This one” was yet another listing for a flat, this one in Frankfurt, Germany. Samael flipped through the pictures and tried not to wrinkle her nose.

“Open living/dining/kitchen with three bedrooms, so plenty of space. It’s a modern build, and—and I like that,” Mephistopheles said very quickly, as if he had to explain himself. To Samael, of all people! “And—and I do like Germany. And if you’ll look at the bathroom …” Mephistopheles flipped through the photos with an intuitive understanding of the top-tier angelic technology that Samael almost envied. “It has a tub _and_ a walk-in shower! I’ve always wanted to try a shower.”

Samael opened her mouth to tell Mephistopheles that if he liked the flat that much, he should get it. It wasn’t as if he had to worry about how to afford rent when he could miracle a bank balance with as many zeroes on the end of it as he liked, and he didn’t have to worry about location either as long as he could use the phone-line trick.

She didn’t get a chance. Mephistopheles had shifted a little nearer to her on the bench and flipped to another set of photos. “Plus, look at those doors! I know there’s a balcony right there, but between the glass railing and the way it’s photographed, it looks like you could just open the door and—and take off. You’d—you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Samael frowned, remembering how ashen Mephistopheles had been when they’d jumped out of Heaven. And he was looking a little peaky even now. “You’d want to live somewhere where it looks like you can open the door and just …” She didn’t want to say _fall_ ; she couldn’t say _fall_ , not to Mephistopheles! “… Fly?” she asked instead.

“Well …” He seemed to hear what she wasn’t saying, and he shrugged. “I mean, it’s a middle floor. Middle-ish. Not too high up. So a good compromise. And I like the view! I’d really like to have _a_ view. It’ll be a nice change from, well …” He shrugged.

“Then if you like it, you should get it,” Samael said.

“But what do _you_ think of it?” Mephistopheles pressed.

Now Samael wrinkled her nose. “Why does it matter what I think of it? It’d be your place. I mean, I’d come to visit whenever you invited me, but …”

Samael trailed off because Mephistopheles was staring at her in something like shock, and before her eyes it shifted into hurt. And then his face closed off, the emotions boxed away and shoved to the side. “… Oh.”

“Oh? What’s oh?” Samael asked.

“N-nothing.” He shoved the phone into his pocket and leaned forward, rubbing a hand over his face.

“It’s not nothing, not when it’s making you look like a kicked puppy. Come on, tell me what’s wrong.”

Mephistopheles worried his lower lip and dared a sidelong glance at her. “I just—I just thought that we’d do this together, is all.”

“Do what together?” Samael asked.

“This!” Mephistopheles said. “Being on Earth! Experiencing things! _Living_!”

_Living …_ Samael thought, and then finally it clicked. “Wait. You—you want us to live together?”

“I thought you’d want it too,” Mephistopheles mumbled to his lap. “But if you don’t—”

“Hey, hey! I never said that!”

Mephistopheles looked up with something like hope in his eyes.

“I mean …” Samael took a long drag of her cigarette and breathed it out just as slowly. “I mean, I would like that. To—to live together. As we try to figure out how to, you know, live and stuff.”

Mephistopheles beamed, and Samael’s heart felt like it grew its own pair of wings. “So—so can you take the phone back out? I’d like another look at the place.”

Mephistopheles didn’t answer; he just took the phone back out and opened up the page again. Now Samael looked more closely. After all, if _she_ was going to be living here …

“I don’t like it,” she pronounced finally. Then thought better of it and looked hard at Mephistopheles. “Wait, you sounded like _you_ really liked it—”

“Nah, it’s fine! Lots of good places out there.” And Mephistopheles was smiling and really did look fine, so Samael decided to take him at his word. “What didn’t you like about it? So we know what not to look for.”

“The—the balcony doors,” Samael admitted, flushing a little. “The last-step’s-a-doozy ones. They—they looked—”

And maybe, given enough time, Samael might have been able to explain _why_ she didn’t like those doors and the balcony that looked like it gave way right into the sky. Or maybe, given enough time, Mephistopheles might have reassured her that it didn’t matter if she couldn’t explain why, because truth to tell the balcony hadn’t been his favorite feature of the flat either, and he was more worried about what she thought of the style and the bathroom and the location and the number of bedrooms.

But they didn’t get that time. Because Samael’s skin suddenly prickled in gooseflesh as unfamiliar demonic auras brushed against her own. And at the same time, she felt a faint chime of recognition as angelic auras entered her sphere of influence.

Her eyes went wide and she stared at Mephistopheles—who by the look of things was experiencing the same revelation in reverse—and scrambled to her feet.

_Right_ , she thought, calling her thunder-spear to her hand, though she didn’t click it open, not yet. If this was a raiding party, the raiders would be in for the fight of their lives. Yes, there were wards, and yes, Heaven and Hell had promised to leave them alone, but Heaven and Hell had bested other gods before, and Samael figured their promise was only as good as the other faiths’ ability to enforce it, which, if a raiding party had already gotten through the wards, was _not_ good—

“Oh, bugger,” said a voice to Samael’s right, at the same time a voice on her left asked, “Archangel Samael? And—and Mephistopheles?”

Samael recognized _both_ voices and didn’t know what direction to look in first. Mephistopheles decided her, asking in a wondering voice, “Liel?”

Which freed Samael to look to her left and ask, “You three?” And it _was_ those three – Ulgon, Altadoth, and Migthaxad, the ones she’d rescued in Hell, though she couldn’t say which was which if you held a Hellfire flamethrower to her head.

“You’re not going to smite us this time, are you?” asked the demon who had spoken first, who was the same demon that had been brave enough to talk to Samael in Hell. She must have been the leader of this little band. “You helped us before. And now—now all we want is …” She didn’t finish in words, but the way her eyes flickered to the tree and the way she licked her lips said what she was thinking clearly enough.

Samael didn’t put her thunder-spear away, but she did lower her arm. “If all you want is to eat from the tree, well …” She shrugged and waved toward it. “Knock yourselves out. Well, not literally. That might hurt.”

The leader-demon looked back at her two companions. Some wordless communication passed between the three of them, and the leader-demon turned back to Samael and nodded. “Thanks. We will.”

She strode forward, toward the tree and the many, many branches and the many, many apples …

And Mephistopheles spoke, though not to the demons. “And what about you four?”

Samael glanced at the angels – Liel and three of her intern friends. Liel stood at the forefront of the group, wringing her hands together. “We—we’d like to have some apples too. If that’s all right.”

“Sure,” Mephistopheles said. “I mean, that’s what they’re here for. For eating.”

“Only—one each,” Samael said. “There are twenty million angels and demons, you know. Gotta leave some for everyone else.”

“Of course. Share and share alike,” Liel said serenely. And the demons looked at each other and shrugged.

And then …

Well.

There was nothing for the angels and the demons to do but to step up to the tree, each take an apple, and start to munch.

They didn’t hesitate. To Samael that was the most surprising part of the whole thing. _She’d_ hesitated, and that was after she’d rescued demons from Hell and unleashed Hellfire in Heaven. But maybe … maybe these angels and these demons had already made their decision – not had it sprung on them with no warning – and had come this far for one reason and one reason alone, which they were bloody well going see through.

Still, the leader-demon looked a bit disappointed after she’d taken her first bite. “You have to eat the whole thing,” Samael said helpfully.

“Oh!” The leader-demon took a second bite, and a third, and a fourth—barely even pausing to chew. “Thish sheet ta’en?” she asked, gesturing to the bench on Samael’s free side.

“No,” Samael said – and, well, with the demons and the angels already munching away, saw no reason not to have a seat herself. So she did. Next to the leader-demon.

Mephistopheles sat himself on her other side and glanced politely at the angels. “You’re welcome to sit too.”

“Thank you,” Liel said, and Samael half-expected to her to then demur, claiming that she’d prefer to stand. But she didn’t. She simply brushed the bench off with her free hand, took a deep breath, and sat on Mephistopheles’s other side.

And with everyone sitting down … silence reigned, broken only by the sounds of teeth breaking the flesh of apples.

… It got very awkward, very quickly.

“Soooo,” Samael said, turning to the leader-demon. “Um—I don’t think we were ever properly introduced?”

“Oh!” This time leader-demon swallowed before she spoke. “I’m Ulgon – that’s Altadoth,” she pointed to the other female-shaped demon, who waved shyly, “and that’s Migthaxad.” The male-shaped demon winked and shot Samael a … well, she’d call it a smile under most circumstances, except there was something distinctly odd about it. She glanced at Mephistopheles, hoping for a translation.

Mephistopheles rolled his eyes. “He’s in the ‘cubus department,” he said, as if that explained anything at all.

“And don’t you forget it, sweetheart,” Migthaxad drawled.

_Sweetheart?_ Samael wondered, and got no further than that, because Altadoth poked Migthaxad in the ribs. “You mean you _were_ in the ‘cubus department. You’re probably very fired now.”

“ _So_ fired,” Ulgon said with a sinfully pleased sigh.

“You’re – you’re _happy_ to be fired?” Liel asked.

“Well, yeah,” Ulgon replied. “Not like we joined Hell for the benefits. Or the pay. Or the workplace culture.”

“Or anything but the lack of a feasible alternative,” Migthaxad added.

“Oh,” Liel said quietly.

“And besides, aren’t you all fired from Heaven?” Ulgon asked, leaning around Samael to better see Liel.

The four interns – well, former interns – glanced at each other and shifted uncomfortably in their seats. “Well …” said one of them – Samael remember this one; this had been the one who’d been very quiet in their first discussion, up until the point where they hadn’t been. “I suppose we are,” they said, shrugging apologetically at their companions.

“And ain’t it great?” Ulgon asked. “Don’t you feel like a whole new angel—um—angel-whose-name-I-don’t-know?”

“Maroth,” said the formerly-quiet-no-longer-intern.

“And I’m Abraxos,” said the male-shaped former intern with the cloudpuff hair.

“And I’m Zarall,” added the tall female-shaped former intern.

“And we know who _you two_ are,” Ulgon said, elbowing Samael in the ribs. “The lower-downs hate you almost as much as they hate Aziraphale and Crowley! And the redhead. Ariadne.”

“The archangels aren’t very fond of you, either,” Liel muttered, blushing a bit.

Samael and Mephistopheles exchanged glances.

Mephistopheles grinned.

Samael grinned back.

“Good,” Samael said. She took a happy puff of her cigarette. “We don’t like them much, either.”

Zarall and Abraxos gasped – though Maroth stifled a chuckle – but it was Ulgon who reacted most effusively. “Oh! Oh, I _like_ you!” She giggled and threw an arm around Samael’s shoulders. Samael went stiff, but Ulgon didn’t seem to notice. “Why the—Someplace weren’t you down with us the whole time? Instead of stuck Upstairs with all the stuffed-shirts?”

“Um—no offense,” Altadoth said to the former interns.

The former interns didn’t seem to know what to make of this, until Liel decided to be diplomatic. “We can be a bit stuffy.” She absently straightened her suit jacket, fiddling with the cuffs. “Maybe—maybe that’s something we can work on. Now that we’re …” She glanced at the apple core in her hand. “Free …”

_Free._ It was a heady thought. Samael had had days and days to wrap her mind around it, and she still hadn’t come to grips with it all. She swallowed heavily and let her head fall back, watching the play of the light through the leaves.

“That’s assuming we are free,” Altadoth said gloomily.

Samael sat up again. A shiver seemed to roll through the ranks of the angels and demons alike.

“Are the lower-downs really going to let us go that easily?” Altadoth asked.

“Or the higher-ups?” asked Zarall.

“Gabriel said anyone who ate the apple was as good as Fallen,” Abraxos said, turning his own apple core over and over in his hands. “But I don’t … I mean I feel _different_ , but … how would we know we’d Fallen, anyway?” Abraxos asked, staring straight at Mephistopheles.

Mephistopheles’s jaw fell and his back went stiff in a way that couldn’t possibly help.

“Oh, trust me, sweetheart,” Migthaxad said, and though his words were light, his tone was anything but. “You’d _know_.”

Abraxos winced and looked away; Liel elbowed him between the ribs. “Abraxos! Apologize!”

“Apol—” Zarall started, wrinkling her nose in confusion.

“He was tasteless and rude,” Maroth said. “ _I’m_ sorry, and I didn’t even say it.”

“And I’m sorry too!” Abraxos blurted out. Then shrunk even further into himself as everyone looked at him. “… Sorry …”

The three demons looked at each other, volumes being spoken in raised eyebrows and sarcastic head-tilts. Until Ulgon turned back to Abraxos with a smile that managed to be both beatific and smug. “We forgive you.”

Then she wiggled and laced her hands behind her head, smirking up at the sky. “Always wanted to say that to an angel.”

“Is he still an angel anymore? Are we still demons?” Altadoth asked.

“Yes,” Mephistopheles said – and he said it so quickly, and so certainly, that even Samael looked at him in some surprise.

Mephistopheles looked like he wanted to shrink back – but he didn’t. Instead, he took a deep breath and kept talking. “We still are who we are. _What_ we are. We just—we get to decide that that means for ourselves, instead of having someone else decide it for us. And …”

He worried his lower lip and shot a questioning glance at Samael. “Well, as far as what to do next … Samael and I were going to get a flat together. Maybe we …” He raised an eyebrow at Samael.

And Samael realized what she was being asked.

_No!_ she wanted to shout. _No, absolutely not! I didn’t set Heaven on fire just to get myself another crop of bloody interns! What I want—what I want—_

What Samael wanted, she realized, was to protect something. To create something. To _build_ something. Instead of just destroying.

And … and the new order of angels, Fallen and Unfallen … that could be something to build. Or to _help_ build. She didn’t have to be in charge, after all. None of them had to be in charge. They could make decisions together. And help each other.

“Maybe—maybe could get a house instead of a flat,” Samael said, raising an eyebrow back at Mephistopheles. “Or – or a few flats. Or a whole block of flats!”

“Ooooh,” Mephistopheles said, and instantly whipped out the cel-phone and began typing.

“And we could all—figure it out together,” Samael said, gesturing to the angels and the demons. “You know. What comes next. How to—how to _live_ , really.”

“And if we stick together, and learn how to use our powers together, we’d be a lot harder for the lower-downs or higher-ups to get rid of,” Altadoth mused. Then, “ _What_?” she demanded when at least six glares fell on her. “Somebody has to think of the worst-case scenario!”

“That too,” Samael murmured. She looked around at the angels and demons. “Well? What do you all think?”

Abraxos’s hand shot into the air. Samael raised an eyebrow, but nodded at him. “Would we have to bunk angel-demon? Like you and Mephistopheles?”

Samael blinked; she hadn’t even thought of that—

“What’s the matter, honey?” Migthaxad drawled in a way that immediately set Abraxos to sputtering. “Don’t wanna share sleeping quarters with us?” And Migthaxad batted his eyes.

“I didn’t—I d-didn’t _s-s-s-say_ that—”

“No,” Mephistopheles interrupted. “Just no. I mean—um—you can all choose your own sleeping arrangements. Living arrangements. Whatever. Just keep the drama to a minimum.”

“Oh, thank Someone,” Altadoth muttered.

A round of chuckles burst out, and somehow – strangely – that seemed to be enough to decide them. Liel shifted a little closer to Mephistopheles on the bench, the better to see the cel-phone. Ulgon clambered off her bench and went around the back so she could look over Mephistopheles’s other shoulder. And Samael …

Samael looked at their ragtag group of five angels and four demons and realized – with a strange flutter in her stomach – that this was only the beginning.

And she saw that it was good.

* * *

_Circa 2019 A.D._

_Heathrow Airport, London_

Crowley, as a rule, did not drive people to the airport. He most emphatically did not drive people to the airport at arse o’clock in the morning. You had to be exceptionally good friends with someone to do that, and the only friend he had who was worth _that_ had to be pried from his bookshop with a crowbar most of the time.

But. Well. Crowley was still a demon, in spite of everything. And as a demon, he supposed he had to believe that the rules were made to be broken.

And if his own kid wasn’t worth breaking a few rules for, then who, other than Aziraphale, _was_?

“I think that’s everything,” Ariadne said, pulling the last of the bags from the Bentley’s boot and handing it off to Dionysus, who seemed determined to show off the whole Greek god thing by carrying _all_ the luggage except for Ariadne’s purse. And they had a lot of luggage.

So there was nothing else for them to do but head into the airport, get on that plane, and … leave …

_Fuuuuuuuuuck._

Crowley pushed his glasses slightly up so he could rub his eyes, but only because it was arse o’clock in the morning, not for any—other reason. Because needing to rub his eyes for any other reason was patently ridiculous. Ariadne had a whole life to get back to, a busy one, with friends to see and films to make and a riotous clan of in-laws to appease. She and Dionysus had already extended their stay in London long enough to help put the bookshop back to rights. And even once the bookshop was back in its usual state of allegedly organized chaos,[3] Ariadne and Dionysus had stayed long enough for Dionysus to make himself scarce for several long afternoons during which Ariadne could ask her questions and he and Aziraphale could try to answer them.

And that was another thing. Aziraphale. He was already wringing his hands together, and Crowley knew what that meant, and that meant that Crowley simply couldn’t be upset. Only one of them was allowed to be upset at a time. That was the whole point of being together—wasn’t it?

Except – when Crowley dared to readjust his sunglasses and open his eyes, he looked right at Ariadne, and her lip was wobbling the way Aziraphale’s did when something bothered him _a lot_ and he was trying desperately not to show it—

_I. Am_. _Fucked._

“Right,” Dionysus said, breaking the tension. “Ari—I’ll head in and get these bags checked, all right?” He raised an eyebrow at Ariadne in some sort of wordless couple communication.

Ariadne nodded.

“And you two …” He smiled at them. “We’ll see you for Thanksgiving. Don’t be strangers. And …” His gaze slipped to Ariadne. “Thanks for everything.”

“It’s _we_ who should be thanking _you_ , dear boy,” Aziraphale said, which was lovely, because that meant that Crowley didn’t have to.

Once again, Dionysus glanced at Ariadne. This time, he smiled. “We’ll call it even. So long, now.”

And with a crooked salute – it was the best he could manage, with all the bags – Dionysus nodded to them and was off.

Leaving Crowley and Aziraphale alone with Ariadne.[4]

None of them seemed to have the least idea what to say. Crowley had entirely forgotten what words were, and Aziraphale cleared his throat three times before settling on, “Well, dear girl—”

That broke the spell; Ariadne launched herself into his arms and Aziraphale held on tight. And Crowley? Crowley let out a breath that he didn’t need and hadn’t known he was holding and leaned against the bonnet of the Bentley. This—this was all right. Let Aziraphale take charge; he was better at this sort of thing anyway—

“ _Thank you_ ,” Ariadne said, sounding sniffly.

“Whatever for?” Aziraphale asked.

“You know.” She looked up with a watery smile. “Raiding Hell. Blowing up Heaven—”

“My _dear_ girl. We’re—we’re your _parents_. It’s literally the least we can do.”

“Sssort of our job, you know,” Crowley added. He tried to look nonchalant, fingers shoved in his pockets and shrugging. “Keeping you in one piece.”

Ariadne smiled and sniffed. “I’ll—I’ll try not to make it a hard one, then.”

“Don’t you worry about that for a minute—”

Ariadne squeezed hard enough to cut Aziraphale off, and wasn’t _that_ a first—Crowley almost wished he’d caught the moment on video. “And we’ll all see each other at Thanksgiving,” Ariadne said, like she’d believe it if she repeated it long enough and hard enough. “You guys need to stay for at least a week or two, to make the plane ride worthwhile. And we can do all the ridiculous tourist things.”

“We shall,” Aziraphale said, and, well, that decided that.

“Good.” Ariadne took a deep breath and stepped back – and Aziraphale let her go, because when you got down to it, that was probably the one parenting thing they actually knew how to do.

Didn’t mean it was easy, though.

Especially since Ariadne was smiling at Crowley now, a wobbly sort of smile that suggested that she might like a hug from him, and that—that _really_ wasn’t his thing—

Except, how could he say no? And did he even want to?

_Nah,_ Crowley thought, and hugged her.

She hugged back tightly, and Crowley gave as good as he got. And for a minute – just for a minute – he was swept back to that tent in Moriah, holding a blanket-wrapped bundle for the first time.

A lot had changed since then. Mostly for the better. And Crowley was grateful for nearly all of it – but right now, what he was most grateful for was the fact that the _first_ time he’d held her wasn’t the _last_. And now … even if they had to say goodbye … they’d say hello again, soon enough. And many times after that. That was one of the better things about being all-but-immortal.

Ariadne seemed to sense his thoughts – or maybe they were just thinking along the same lines – because when she pulled back, she only had one thing to say. “ _Ciao_.”

Hello and goodbye. Well. Wasn’t that something.

“ _Ciao_ ,” Crowley said back, and he brushed a curl out of her face, simply because he could.

Ariadne swallowed hard, and then – with one last wave to him and Aziraphale – she turned and headed toward the revolving door.

Crowley gravitated to Aziraphale’s side as soon as she was gone, and Aziraphale gravitated to his. Crowley reached for Aziraphale’s hand, but Aziraphale had other ideas and slipped an arm around Crowley’s waist. Crowley had absolutely no complaints about that and even returned the favor.

They were standing like that when Ariadne reached the doors and turned around one last time to wave. They waved back.

She went into the airport – and still they didn’t move. Not until Ariadne had gone far enough inside that they’d have to turn on eyes in a few other dimensions in order to see where she’d gone. And that would be, well, creepy.

Crowley took a deep breath and said – because someone had to – “Well. Home, angel?”

Aziraphale looked up, eyes suspiciously glassy and lip wobbling slightly. He swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course. Let’s go.”

Crowley opened the passenger door for Aziraphale before slipping into the driver’s seat. And once inside, he immediately pulled into traffic without bothering to check his mirrors.[5] Aziraphale didn’t even scold, though he did yelp and grab the oh-shit bar.

Once they were safely[6] on the A4, Aziraphale coughed – and not in his “I just choked on my breath mint because you cut off a lorry _again_ ” way. “Er, Crowley, you know, I was—er, I was _thinking_ …”

“A dangerous pastime.”

“Oh, hush. Anyway, I was thinking …”

Crowley glanced sidelong to see Aziraphale worrying his hands together, and well, that simply wouldn’t do. “Hey,” he said, and put his hand on the console between them.

Aziraphale saw it, and _beamed_ , and immediately took Crowley’s hand in his. They threaded their fingers together like they’d been doing this for decades – centuries – _millennia_.

Crowley knew he looked completely uncool, suddenly grinning like a loon – but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Anyway. I’ve been thinking—you—you said we were going home.”

“We _are_. I know exactly where we’re going, trust me—”

“No, no, that’s not what I mean—I mean, I trust that you know where we’re going. Obviously. Just …” Aziraphale shifted in his seat. “Well, you have your flat. And I have my bookshop. And, well, I’m not sure which is really _home_ —”

“I thought we’d get breakfast first,” Crowley said. “Figured you’d be peckish. And there’s that coffee shop with the scones you like in Westminster—”

“No, no—well, again, not _no_ , some scones sound delightful, even better if you’d pronounce the word correctly, I just— _Crowley_.” Aziraphale squeezed his hand, and Crowley glanced at him with a raised eyebrow.

Aziraphale was turning a set of imploring angelic blue eyes on him, and—oh, _no_. Crowley was in _so much_ trouble, because he’d never _once_ been able to say no to that face—

“I was thinking,” Aziraphale said quickly, like if he didn’t say it now, he’d never get the words out, “that—that it might be nice to have—to have a _home_. Together.”

Crowley’s jaw fell. And he blinked. And just to make sure he’d done it properly, he blinked again.

“You—you want a home. Together.”

Swallowing hard, Aziraphale nodded.

“Which means you want to move in—with _me_?”

“I understand if you don’t want to,” Aziraphale said quickly. “Truly, I do. It—you have spent _so_ long as your own demon, and I can understand if you need your space, and I know my books take up a lot of room and I imagine I wouldn’t be the easiest person to live with—”

“Whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa! What makes you think I wouldn’t want to move in with you?”

“Well—you—you didn’t seem enthusiastic …”

“Enthusiastic? Let me get over the shock first! Of course—of course I want to move in with you. Angel. I …”

And Crowley had to stop there, because his tongue was tangled up in knots and if he tried to say more, he was fairly sure all that would come out was hissing. And probably a fair amount of blubbering.

It didn’t matter, though. Because to judge by the way Aziraphale beamed, he probably understood what Crowley couldn’t say. “Oh. Oh, good! And—and you know, I was thinking—”

“You seem to have done a _lot_ of that.”

“I can’t help it; it’s just how I’m put together. _Anyway_. I was—I was thinking, maybe we could—well. Perhaps we could … find a new place? A fresh start? With—with room for a garden for you, and of course a nice big library for me, and—and, well, all of the other human, homely things.”

That—that sounded. Well. Crowley hated the word, but it fit, so he’d use it.

It sounded _nice_.

Except one thing.

“Angel,” he said, “I hate to break it to you, but unless you want to live next door to a Russian oligarch, you’re— _we’re_ not likely to find a place like that in London.”

“Well, it doesn’t have to be in London,” Aziraphale said mildly. “We could move to the country. The proper country, mind. None of this suburb nonsense.”

If Crowley was the type of demon to have heart attacks, that statement probably would have caused one. Aziraphale wanted to leave London? Live in the country? With _him_?

Yet because he was, at the end of the day, a certain type of demon, Crowley decided to push his luck. “You know … I always rather fancied the South Downs.”

“Oh!” Aziraphale sat up, eyes shining. “Oh, I like that idea! Close enough to the city that we could still head in, when we wanted. But—but far away. Secluded. Or it _could_ be, you know, if we wanted it to be. Depending on where we moved.”

“Y-yeah,” Crowley said, and swallowed hard. If he’d had a free hand, he would have pinched himself.

But since he didn’t … he’d do the next best thing.

“And …” Crowley gulped. “And this isn’t moving … too fast?”

He looked fully at Aziraphale then. Because even if the angel tried to prevaricate with his words – he was _very good_ at that – he would never be able to do that with his face—

And he didn’t.

Aziraphale’s eyes went soft, and he _smiled_ , and Crowley melted.

“My dear boy,” Aziraphale said. “I don’t think you could go too fast if you tried.”

Crowley smiled. He really smiled, and he probably looked like a fool, but he didn’t care, because Aziraphale was smiling back, and right now, everything was all right—

Except—except Aziraphale’s eyes were flickering forward—and his face was going pale—and—

“Except _now_ , watch the _road_ , Crowley!”

“Wha—” Crowley looked ahead and saw the Bentley inches away from the arse of a slow-moving lorry. He threw the car into the next lane to the chorus of a great laying on of horns.

“You nearly got us kill—discorporated!” Aziraphale shouted.

“I did not! We were fine; everything was _fine_ ; everything is fine! And anyway, that lorry was going too slow!”

“The _lorry_ was fine; _you_ , however, were driving like a maniac—”

“A _maniac_?!”

And so bickering, they drove off into the sunrise of a brand new day.

* * *

_Circa 2020 A.D._

_Los Angeles, California_

When Ariadne woke up on New Year’s Day, Dionysus was still asleep.

She lay where she was, watching him. He always looked younger in slumber, boyish and carefree. Even with drool escaping the corner of his mouth and a soft snore. Ariadne’s fingers ghosted along his jaw, thumb sweeping over the bottom of his chin.

She might have curled closer, resting her head on his chest and letting sleep come for her again. But Dionysus’s eyes fluttered open. In the dim light of their bedroom, they were dark and warm. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Ariadne said back. She ducked in for a brief peck. “Happy New Year. Again.”

“Happy New Year.” He stretched, languid as a cat. “What time is it?”

The alarm clock was behind her, but rather than roll over, Ariadne snapped her phone into her hand. “Twelve-thirty. PM.”

Dionysus grunted. “We missed the parade.”

“Have we ever been awake for the parade?”

“Eh … ten years ago? We caught the first hour.” He tilted his head and grinned at her. “And then we stumbled up to bed.”

Ariadne laughed. “True. I’d forgotten.” Now it was her turn to roll onto her back, to stretch. “I’m going to head downstairs and make coffee – do you want some?”

“I think what I need is a shower,” Dionysus replied, rubbing his temple. “Though I could go for a Bloody Mary.”

Of course. Dionysus had rung in every new year with a Bloody Mary since they were invented. “As you wish.” Another quick peck, and Ariadne was slithering out of bed and snapping a robe onto her shoulders. “It’ll be ready when you get downstairs.”

“Thanks,” Dionysus called after her.

Ariadne meandered into the kitchen, feet skimming the cool tile. The Keurig was bullied into preparing her coffee just as she liked it with a hard glance and a raised eyebrow; the Bloody Mary would require a softer touch.

But she could cheat a little. A snap of her fingers arranged the ingredients, the cocktail shaker, the garnishes and a pre-salted glass on the counter. Once everything was in the shaker, she headed over to the window over the sink to peek outside as she shook everything together.

The sun-drenched backyard was deserted – not even a rabbit or a frog hopping about. But her eyes went, as they had ever since the past fall, to the apple tree growing next to her favorite lounge chair.

The tree was still bowed down with apples. None had been taken since they’d left for the party the night before. A swift stab of disappointment – and then Ariadne grabbed hold of herself. There were hundreds of trees all over the globe, and she and Dionysus (mostly Dionysus) had spent the past century making sure that neither angels nor demons dared set foot in LA.

Besides … it wasn’t like the other apple trees had stood unmolested since the autumn …

The Keurig beeped at the same time that Ariadne judged she’d shaken the cocktail enough. She poured the mix into the glass and added the celery stalks and speared olives. Then she grabbed her coffee from the Keurig and wandered into the living room.

Living among mortals as long as they had, she and Dionysus had picked up a few bad habits. The row of photos on the mantel was one of them. As she often did on mornings when no apples had been taken from the tree, Ariadne headed to the mantelpiece and surveyed the photos.

Before last autumn, the photos had been a carefully curated collection of photos from sets, wrap parties, red carpets and after-parties, with a few family shots thrown in for good measure. They’d been just as carefully rotated out every ten years or so, to keep the mortals from wondering why Dionysus and Ariadne had been photographed on the set of a movie that had been released when they would have been in elementary school. Now, the selection of photos was rather different – and the mantelpiece was covered in thick nothing-to-see-here wards to keep mortals from asking inconvenient questions.

Ariadne didn’t think she’d want to relegate these photos to albums after only a decade.

Some of the family photos remained. There was the huge clan photo taken at Rio de Janeiro; that would stay where it was until the next clan photo was taken in Tokyo. And the photo from two Thanksgivings ago – the one of her, Dionysus, and Hermes taken in the latter’s New York apartment with Snoopy floating past the windows in the background – would remain until they got a Thanksgiving photo to top it.

The rest, however, were new.

Mephistopheles had texted her the first one, which showed Samael leaping away from a flaming saucepan, a familiar blue box on the counter next to her. The question “How do you cook macaroni and cheese?!?” had accompanied it. That picture had spurred Ariadne’s first time traveling through a phone line, and when she had returned, Dionysus had still been laughing, and he’d put the photo on the mantel.

The second photo had come via Eris and Snapchat. It showed Crowley caught mid-whoop with both hands in the air. One of the hands held a game controller. Eris had captioned the photo, “HE GOT THE WABBAJACK!” To Crowley’s right, the fireplace in the cottage could be seen, complete with mantelpiece, complete with the real Wabbajack and Can o’ Worms in pride of place.

Crowley had sent the next one. It showed Aziraphale in his library, seated in an easy chair with tartan-sock-clad feet up on an ottoman. On his nose was perched a pair of ridiculously small glasses that Ariadne didn’t think he needed, and in his hand was an old leather-bound book. Crowley had captioned the photo, “ _Angelus principium_ in his natural habitat.”

Aziraphale had sent – via the _mail_ – the photo after that. Most of the it was taken up by a vine-covered cottage. In the far-left corner Crowley stood, hands on his hips, scowling at a rosebush. Somehow, the bush looked like it was trembling. Aziraphale had written “Crowley yelling at the new plants” on the back, and honestly, Ariadne wasn’t sure if she wanted to know.

The next photo hadn’t been sent by anyone. It had been taken on the bridge in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Ariadne, Dionysus, Aziraphale, and Crowley stood together. Ariadne and Dionysus had been Disney-bounding as Ariel and Eric, Aziraphale and Crowley as Cogsworth and Lumiere. Once the concept of Disney-bounding had been explained to them, Crowley had insisted on the characters, and he’d also insisted on speaking the entire day in a comically bad French accent that had nothing to do with Jerry Orbach’s voice acting or his own ability to speak French and everything to do with annoying Aziraphale.

There were more pictures sent by Mephistopheles – pictures of angels and demons attempting to make a rooftop garden grow, staring at a shower, clustered around a television showing an episode of _Golden Girls_. And in some of those photos – just barely big enough to see – were other photos, grainy surveillance stills from Heaven. Gabriel was in all of them – sometimes just his coat, sometimes just his desk, sometimes his face either crossed out or defaced with a mustache – and an apple was also in every single one of the photos. Sometimes it was red, and sometimes it was golden, and in one memorable photo it was being thrown across the room.

Interspersed among the pictures were postcards. Each one had been hand-drawn. One showed a horned stick figure sitting next to a big brown animal that bore more than a passing resemblance to a capybara. Another showed a still lake on a starlit night, the Corona Borealis carefully picked out in the sky and in the lake. Yet another showed a winter wonderland with penguins and polar bears. The only postcard that wasn’t on the mantel was the first one Ariadne had received – because that one, with its simple message of _I love you_ and _I miss you_ and _I’ll see you soon_ written on the back, lived in Ariadne’s purse, so she’d have it with her no matter where she went.

But it was the last photograph that was Ariadne’s favorite.

This one had been taken by Apollo when he and Artemis had burst into the bookshop as they were trying to clean it up last fall. They’d insisted on meeting Crowley and Aziraphale (“We didn’t get a chance on Olympus!”) and Apollo had insisted on taking a picture (“They’re your parents, Ari! You need a picture!”). He’d shooed the three of them under the oculus, spent five minutes prowling the bookshop to find the perfect angle, had taken at least a dozen photos, and had finally pronounced one of them “all right, I guess, for a cellphone snapshot.”

It was more than all right. The one thing Apollo hadn’t messed with was their poses, so Ariadne had been free to put an arm around each of her parents, and Aziraphale had been free to beam at the camera while fussing with his waistcoat with his free hand (the other being around Ariadne), and Crowley had been free to attempt to look far too cool for any of this – and fail miserably, if his smile and the arm he had around Ariadne were anything to judge by.

The first thing Ariadne had done once they were back in LA had been to put that photo up on the mantel, complete with a miracled frame that _could_ have gone full kitsch, dripping with sentimentality and covered with words like “family” and “joy” and “love.” But instead the frame had only said one word, and that one word had said everything.

The frame said, “Home.”

Ariadne took a deep breath and raised her coffee mug to the photograph in a silent toast before taking a long sip. And thus caffeinated, she snapped her cell phone into her hand and thumbed over to the second number she had on speed dial.

It was answered on the second ring by a fussy, prim English accent. “Hello?”

“Happy New Year, Aziraphale!”

“Ariadne, dear girl! Happy New Year! Hold on a moment, let me get your father—Crowley!”

As an angel puttered in his cottage an ocean away, trying to get a demon on the phone, Ariadne flopped onto the couch, tucked her legs under her, and grinned to no one.

It was the start of a brand-new year. And for the first time in far too long, she’d be welcoming it in with her family by her side.

For the first time in far too long, Ariadne was finally home. 

* * *

[1] At least in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, winter was turning into spring.

[2] Not counting the Ritz Hotel, St. James’s Park, A.Z. Fell & Co., and half a dozen other secret and not-so-secret rendezvous points.

[3] To be specific, Aziraphale alleged that the bookshop was organized. Crowley maintained that it was chaos, and one of these days he was going to prove it.

[4] Or at least, as alone as one could feasibly get in the departures drop-off lane at Heathrow.

[5] Cutting off three taxis, an estate car and a Tesla that Crowley took great pleasure in making a rude gesture to as it honked at him.

[6] For a given value of the word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy motherforking shirtballs, this thing is _done_.
> 
> Thank you SO MUCH for making it this far and riding this crazy train with me! Reading and responding to your comments has been one of the best parts of writing and posting this fic. If you enjoyed it, please feel free to leave a comment. And of course, I can't let this thing go without thanking my amazing betas once again, [andavri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andavri/pseuds/andavri) and [AnnUsual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnUsual/pseuds/AnnUsual). And everyone on the [Ace Omens](https://discord.com/channels/606085415174144040/606091582122360832) Discord server!
> 
> If you _really_ enjoyed what you read, you may note that this is now part of a series ... I make no promises, but I've had a few ideas for one-shots and outtakes, so I created the series to keep them all together.
> 
> And that being said ... thank you for reading, I hope you liked it, and if you enjoyed yourself, please feel free to chat with me on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/)!

**Author's Note:**

> FYI - I've only listed one work as a parent work, but I have done a ton of reading in this fandom and have been at least a little bit inspired by MANY works. If you liked what you read here, you might want to check out [Suffer the children](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20459066/chapters/48543203) by [Ineffable_Plans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ineffable_Plans/pseuds/Ineffable_Plans) and [JMA](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JMA/pseuds/JMA), [The Sandford Flower Show](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20577284/chapters/48849542) by [Mussimm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mussimm/pseuds/Mussimm), [Akashic Records](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1446628) by [PeniG](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeniG/pseuds/PeniG), and [If We've Got Nothing (We've Got Us)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19253575/chapters/45786235) by [Kedreeva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kedreeva/pseuds/Kedreeva). We're definitely playing with some of the same themes, and I was absolutely inspired by some of the things these (fantastic) writers did.


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